


Despair is Less Abundant (in Those Who Understand How to Plant Their Hearts) in Community Gardens

by FinalFallenFantasy



Category: X-Men Evolution
Genre: Anarchism, Community Garden, Fellatio, Flexible Love, Gardening, It's not what you think, Kodd, M/M, Masturbation, Oral Sex, Pining, Slow Burn, Solarpunk, Sort Of, ToddKurtslash, Whipped Cream, adult!Kurt, adult!Todd, boys bein anarchists, graphic smut, secondary OCs - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-15 09:00:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 67,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28560942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FinalFallenFantasy/pseuds/FinalFallenFantasy
Summary: Kurt has left the X Men, he's alone and rudderless and disillusioned in a world undergoing climate collapse. He wants to make a difference, but how do you do that in a world full of megalomaniacs? Well, starting a community garden seems like a good place to start.Chapter 4 onwards rated E.
Relationships: Toad/Kurt Wagner
Comments: 79
Kudos: 24





	1. Don't Talk To Cops

**Author's Note:**

> I got back into this pairing at the end of 2020 after discovering an old folder I had as a teen that contained fics and art I really loved at the time and printed out to keep in case the internet failed.
> 
> I hope you enjoy it. If you're into this pairing still, 20 years after the show aired, feel free to get in touch! I miss the old LJ Community, can you tell?
> 
> Unbeta'd at this time, feel free to point out any errors, I can certainly take it. Ciao!

_Crunch._ _Pause. Crunch._

The spade dug into the frozen soil like a blunt chisel, scraping off only a thin layer at a time. Barely worth chucking aside before digging in again. Kurt sighed and paused to rub his hands together, grateful that his fingers were better at keeping warm than most humans’. Even as it was, even with the fur and their thicker mass and fewer number, they were stinging in the cold. Even after all this time, it was strange seeing them, seeing _him_ , out in public without his inducer. Blue far bared to the world, at least his hands, head and feet. The rest was swathed in a white woollen turtleneck and baggy harem pants that hid the shape of his legs and made for easy movement. Mutants weren’t exactly _accepted_ , not in any real way, but he’d gotten tired of hiding and broken the damn thing before he could change his mind five years ago. And now he was out here, in the cold, by himself. No one else showed.

He shook his head. Old memories turn no new soil. He sighed and looked around at the barren patch of waste ground. Rubble, a few straggling, tenacious weeds and icy puddles that would thaw into yet more muddy, undrinkable water come the spring. The sky was iron-grey and pregnant with the threat of more snow. Just the sight of it made him want to shiver and shrink back into the neck of his sweater. It wasn’t the right time of year to be doing this. But, he thought, sharply pulling the spade back out of the ground and setting it again, it needed doing.

‘If not now, then when. If not you then who,’ he murmured with a wry smirk. Cliché fucking phrase, but oh how they drilled it into one at school. Along with the history teacher’s ‘you’re never late until you’re late’, it was one of those little bits of idiomatic debris that got stuck in the plughole of the mind and drifted to the surface every now and then.

He pushed down.

 _Crunch._ Again, less than an inch into the soil.

‘Mein _Gott,_ ’ Kurt growled with frustration. Anyone else could just jump on the damn thing with their feet but no, he had to have _special_ feet that couldn’t wear _shoes_ and were _frozen_ already.

‘Ugh.’ He dropped the spade in disgust. If only Kitty were there, she could just phase it down into the ground. His shoulders sagged and he plopped down onto the ground beside the spade. Stupid thought. She was still too busy with the X Men, following Xavier’s golden path. Kurt sighed and watched his breath mist in the air. Maybe he’d made a mistake. But it was pointless, thinking like that. As if he didn’t still wake up every night seeing the faces of the students as they died, one after another, knocked down and burned up and riddled with bullets. Every one of them under twenty.

Kurt shut his eyes and breathed slowly in and out, trying to still the trembling in his hands. He wouldn’t help anyone by having a panic attack out in the open in the middle of the day. After a while, he felt steady enough to open his eyes again. The mist of his breath looked like smoke. But smoke wasn’t as frightening as a lot of things. He saw that every time he ported. He took in one more last, deep breath and sighed.

Then he stood, picked up the spade and started again. Why was _this_ where his focus had taken him? _Crunch._ Why not self defence training, or medical aid? Why was he out here in the cold, trying to dig into soil that clearly did not want him?

Because he was done with death. He had seen so many people die, so many good, young, strong people. Mowed down like so much grass into hay. He needed to grow things. To make things live. It was not absolution, but it was something. It was good, honest work, and it would one day feed people. He would grow plants, make them live, and when they had finished their living, or during it, they would feed people, and make them live too. It was holy.

Holy. That fucking word. Kurt almost wanted to spit. Not at God, no, never at Him. But at the Church, with its twisting rules and perversions of the Word. He’d tried to be a priest once, before this. But they didn’t want a mutant. Didn’t want a homosexual. Didn’t want anything to do with him. He who looked so much like the Devil. Kurt scowled and threw the spade into the ground with renewed strength. _Crunch_. Never mind that God Himself _made_ mutants. Never mind that not a word in the Bible spoke against love. Never mind that he didn’t _choose_ to look the way he did.

‘Christ, Fuzzy, what’d the ground ever do to you?’

Kurt dropped the spade and whirled around. On the other side of the pathetic, waist-high chain link fence stood a man. He had long brown hair that hung down over his tan leather-clad shoulders, obscuring the snot-green, holed scarf he wore. His eyes were black to the edges, with red irises, and his skin was covered in a strange mottling, varying between an unhealthy green and unnaturally pale. Another mutant, then. But Kurt didn’t think he recognised him.

Tensing, he felt his blue fur stand on end, hackles raising. He didn’t recognise the guy, but that _voice_.

‘Aw don’t tell me you don’t remember me, Fuzzbut,’ the man drawled in his obnoxious Brooklyn accent. A tongue darted out to lick his chapped, wide lips. It was green.

‘ _Toad_?’ Kurt exclaimed, reeling back. His feet caught in the spade and he nearly toppled to the ground, only his tail saving him at the last minute.

‘Easy, Fuzz, I ain’t here to fuck you up.’ Toad hopped over the fence and crouched on the icy ground, prodding it with one finger. ‘The fuck you doin’ here anyhow? Tryin’ ta do your back in? Don’t get enough pummelling with the X Geeks, that it?’

‘I’m not with them anymore,’ Kurt mumbled, looking anywhere but at Toad. He did not want to answer any questions about that just yet. Not with someone who _knew_.

‘How come?’

‘I’d rather not talk about it.’

‘Ay, dawg, s’coo.’ For once Toad seemed to take the hint. He stared around at the small, frozen lot. ‘Seriously though, what _are_ you doin’ here?’ He glanced sidelong at Kurt with a grin. ‘You ain’t diggin’ a grave are you?’

‘Ja, to put myself in,’ Kurt replied, rolling his eyes. ‘I’m getting nowhere with this.’ He gestured around. ‘How am I supposed to dig all this by myself? No one showed up.’

‘You startin’ a community garden or something?’ Toad asked, fluidly pulling a packet of cigarettes from his jacket and flicking open a lighter.

Kurt shrugged uncomfortable. ‘Well… yeah. I invited all the people down this road, put up posters. I even left flyers in the coffee shops on the main road.’

‘So you _were_ the one who put all those up.’ Toad grinned. ‘You really are Mr Goody Two Shoes, ain’t ya?’

Before Kurt had the chance to reply, Toad stood up and kicked at the frozen soil, taking a deep drag from his cigarette. ‘What you need is newspaper, dawg.’

‘Newspaper?’ Kurt was nonplussed.

‘Yeah man. Newspaper and a bunch a woodchip. Lay it all out nice and flat where you want the soil turned and cover it in woodchip’n’shit. Actual shit’s good too, like horse’n’that.’ He took another drag. ‘Or cow. Whatever really. Just need the woodchip for sure.’

‘And what?’ Kurt asked. ‘It just… composts down into soil?’

‘Yeah, foo. Easier than breakin’ your back on it. Leave it six months and you’ve got planting beds, dawg. That’s in time for spring planting, right? You got worms already down here, I bet you. Let them do the work. Better for ‘em than digging around and cuttin’ them up, too.’

‘How do you know all this?’ Kurt stared at him. He looked different from when he’d last known him, of course, but the posture was all the same. Still that uncertain slouch, simultaneously defiant and insecure, awaiting a punch. Same defensive half-scowl and fluid motion. And yet he wasn’t attacking him, wasn’t mocking him (much). Why was he helping him?

‘Dunno, foo. Pick things up, you know.’ Toad scuffed his worn-out sneaker on the ground again. ‘You want some help?’

‘Why would you want to help me?’ Kurt asked curiously.

‘Yeesh, dawg, I dunno. I saw your fuckin’ posters and came along to see what was happening down here. Didn’t know it was you.’

‘You… wanted to help with the garden?’

‘Yeah foo, that a problem?’ Todd drew himself up defensively and glared at Kurt so fiercely that Kurt could see the fourteen year old lurking inside the man. He threw his head back and laughed.

‘You look… exactly the same as when we were kids.’

‘Yeah and you haven’t changed a fuckin’ bit,’ Toad said grumpily, hitching his shoulders up around his ears and taking another drag.

Kurt let out a few more chuckles before wiping the wetness from the fine fur around his eyes.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I just… it’s so _weird_ , seeing you. Here, of all places.’

‘Yeah well it ain’t exactly a walk in the park seeing you either,’ Toad snapped.

Kurt looked seriously at him. ‘What happened to you?’ The last time he’d seen the Toad was long before the firefight, before all that death came raining down on them at once. He’d just disappeared one day, and none of the X Men had noticed. Except Kurt. He’d never known whether he felt relieved or worried by that. How easy it was for one of their own to disappear and have no one notice, as long as they were on the wrong team.

Toad smirked at him. ‘I’d razzer not talk about it,’ he said in a lilting imitation of Kurt’s own voice.

‘I do _not_ sound like that!’

‘Hate to break it to you,’ Toad replied with a grin. He leaned in. ‘But you do.’

Once upon a time, Kurt would have leapt at the other mutant for that – he had done for less – but he liked to think he’d mellowed out somewhat by now. That didn’t stop him from reaching out and flicking the Toad’s nose though.

‘Oh fer cryin’ out-’ Toad barrelled into him and as Kurt stepped back, his feet got tangled in the spade and he crashed to the ground with the Toad on top of him, pinning him to the cold earth.

‘You really haven’t changed at all, have you,’ Kurt laughed, surprising himself, before disappearing in a puff of black smoke and reappearing to drop down onto the Toad’s back, flattening him.

‘You’n your fuckin’ playing dirty,’ Toad muttered into the rocky ground. Kurt straddled him and pinned his arms to the ground above his head.

‘It’s not playing dirty if you know what to expect,’ he said with a grin. ‘It’s not my fault you keep picking fights you can’t win.’

‘Oh that does it, Fuzzy.’ Toad wriggled under him, writhing like a snake as he tried to shuck Kurt off his back.

‘Say uncle,’ Kurt crooned, dipping his face closer to speak. Toad’s head flew back and Kurt suddenly saw stars. His hands flew up to an explosion of pain in his nose. Toad crowed with delight and took advantage of Kurt’s distraction to haul himself bodily out from under his rival.

‘You boys alright?’ a sharp voice called, cracking through the cold air like a whip.

Kurt struggled to his feet and turned around to see a cop staring sternly at him from over the fence.

‘Oh, yes officer,’ he said thickly, still clutching at his nose. ‘Just a misunderstanding.’

He heard Toad scramble to his feet behind him.

‘Ay dawg, we’re just roughhousing,’ he said, coming to stand beside Kurt. ‘We’re all cool.’

‘Do you folks have permission to be on this land?’ the cop asked, eyeing them suspiciously. Kurt could tell he was just itching for an excuse to arrest one of them. It was like a game at the station – who could catch the freakiest mutant? And for once it might actually be a toss-up between them.

‘Oh yes officer,’ Kurt lied, keeping his hands visible. ‘I spoke to the owner last week. I’m trying to start a community garden for the local kids, something to get them off the streets and doing something productive. It’s good for kids to grow their own food, makes them appreciate it more.’

The cop sniffed. ‘Damn right. But I’m not too comfortable knowing you’re out here fighting in the street so close to good folks’ homes.’ The emphasis on ‘good folks’ was enough to make Kurt’s hackles rise.

‘Of course not officer,’ Toad said smarmily. ‘It’s settin’ a bad example. I just ain’t seen this lump in damn near a decade an’ got a little overexcited is all. Won’t happen again, least ways not for another ten years or so.’

To Kurt’s surprise, the cop actually laughed at that.

‘Well make sure it doesn’t. Can’t see as a community garden’s causing much trouble, especially not on this dump. Might be a nice change. But I’m going to have to take down the name of the owner. Number too, if you’ve got it.’

Kurt almost rolled his eyes. Of course the fucker couldn’t be bothered to check the records himself. But it was better that way. If only everything was this easy. But he faked a smile instead, careful to hide his fangs. God must be smiling on him today. ‘It’s Arthur Sefton,’ he said smoothly. ‘His number is 202 635 8974.’

‘Alright.’ The officer flipped his notebook shut and slipped it back into his pocket. ‘Don’t think I won’t follow that up. Now, either of you boys got a light?’

‘Sure.’ Toad pulled out a cheap, yellow lighter from his pocket and tossed it across the fence. ‘Keep it, I got spares, yo.’

‘Thanks. I patrol round here regularly, I’ll be keeping an eye on this little project of yours.’

As he walked away Kurt felt tension leak out of his body. He sagged and dropped into a crouch, running his broad fingers over the dirt between his feet. Toad spat as the cop rounded the corner and joined him on the ground.

‘Fuckin’ hate cops,’ he muttered. ‘Makes my skin crawl, all that “protect’n’serve” shit.’

Kurt nodded. Long gone were the days when he’d thought the police actually stood for something. Now he just did his best to avoid them. Never knew when one of them might take it into their head to bag a blue devil.

‘Thought you were Mr. Goody Two Shoes, dawg,’ Toad said, lighting another cigarette. His brown hair hung around his face, obscuring the strange markings on his face.

Kurt ran his hands through his own hair, sighing gustily. ‘Not any more. I just want to do what’s right now, whatever that is.’

‘Think that’s what you wanted before,’ Toad grunted. ‘Just followin’ the wrong heads back then.’

‘What about you?’ Kurt folded his arms across his knees and rested his head on them to look Toad.

The other mutant shrugged. ‘Dunno, dawg. I just wanted to survive. When I couldn’t stick Magneto’s fuckin’ proselytising anymore I shipped out.’

‘He let you go?’

Toad snorted. ‘Not fuckin’ likely.’ He tapped ash off the end of his cigarette and glanced sidelong at Kurt. ‘I’m in hiding.’

‘Oh.’ Kurt didn’t know what to say. In a way, he was too. He had a new identity, and lived where no one knew him, but it wasn’t like there were many blue, furry demons in the world, let alone in the States.

‘Who’s Sefton?’ Toad asked. ‘Name sounds familiar. Wasn’t that the chick you dated back at Bayville High?’

Kurt chuckled. It was strange being around someone who remembered that far back in his life. ‘Yes, actually. It’s her husband’s name. He took her name when they married. I told him about this project und he said to say he owned it if anyone asked. They live out of state so he’s happy to keep them busy until they work it out.’

Toad nodded noncommittally and took another drag. ‘So,’ he said, stubbing out the butt and tucking it in his back pocket as he stood. ‘You wanna go find some newspaper?’

Kurt laughed for the third time that day. ‘Sure. Why not?’


	2. Take a Look Around (There's Free Shit Everywhere If You Look)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys go on a field trip and collect the treasure that is other people's trash. Kurt is, as always, a little shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm starting to see a shape for this fic now, which means I'm much less likely to abandon it halfway through. I think 4-5 chapters, and maybe some side-drabbles in the same world. I hope you enjoy!

They spent the next few hours trawling through recycling bins and dumpsters, gathering newspapers and even some thrown-out muffins and pastries from a nearby bakery that went into quieting Kurt's rumbling belly and Todd's hangry griping.

‘Reckon that should do it,’ the Toad said as they filled up a third sack. ‘Can’t carry much more anyhow.’

‘We don’t need to,’ Kurt said, touching Toad’s shoulder and porting them back to the wasteground.

‘Jesus, warn a guy, wouldja?’ Toad scowled at him and dumped his sack of newspapers on the ground. ‘Anyhow, this won’t do by itself, man. We gotta find some woodchip.’

‘I don’t have a wheelbarrow,’ Kurt admitted sheepishly.

‘Eh, we can sort that out as we go. You know the intersection at Ash and Seventh?’

‘Ja.’

‘Get us there, we’ll get my truck.’

‘You don’t live very close,’ Kurt said neutrally. He’d been taking it for granted that Toad was being honest when he said he wasn’t there to cause trouble. Why had he come so far then?

‘Yeah I do, dawg.’ Toad rolled his eyes. ‘It’s in the shop. Where I fuckin’ work. Now come on, ‘fore it gets late.’

Kurt supposed he had to start learning to trust _somewhere_. He grasped Toad’s shoulder again and ported them to the intersection. A few passersby startled, then tucked their heads down and kept walking, but Kurt could almost _hear_ them muttering about the mutants being everywhere these days, and so inconsiderate and didn’t they have any shame.

He sighed. There was no point in dwelling on it. He’d faced worse, and for other things too.

‘C’mon, yo,’ Toad called over his shoulder as he started down the street toward a small garage tucked in between two grocery stores.

Kurt trailed along behind, eyes darting at potential ambush spots. If Toad had been sent by Magneto, then whoever might be waiting would know he was a teleporter and would have come prepared.

Toad didn’t wait for him, walking straight into the garage and disappearing into a little side office. Kurt cautiously followed him into the shop and gazed around. It looked like any other backstreet garage. There was a jeep up in the air with a mechanic tinkering underneath, and beside it a beaten-up pickup truck sat idly on the rollers. Kurt glanced through the grubby window to the office and saw Toad laughing with a woman in overalls, her face smudged with grease. She threw him a set of keys and he caught them with his tongue.

She laughed again and said something Kurt couldn’t make out. Toad pulled a face at her and grinned as he waved goodbye.

‘Come on Fuzzy,’ he said as he re-entered the shop. ‘Let’s go get your woodchip. Side door’s open.’ He got into the driver’s side and gunned the engine, revving it a few times before leaning out of the window and bawling, ‘Sounds like you did a good job, Kat!’

Kurt caught sight of the girl giving him a thumbs up through the window before he slipped in through the passenger door and slammed it shut. The red leather seats were greyed with age and ingrained dirt, yellowing foam erupting out where the seams had split.

Toad caught Kurt reaching behind himself, fingers searching.

‘Ain’t no seatbelts dawg, this baby’s ancient.’

Toad threw the truck into reverse and slung an arm over the middle seat to stare over his shoulder as he steered out of the shop. As they swung back onto the road, he sounded the horn a couple of times before shifting gears and tearing down the road.

‘How long have you had this thing?’ Kurt shouted over the roaring of the engine.

‘’Bout two years,’ Toad called back. ‘She’s a good runner, yo. And she’s gonna save that fuzzy butt today.’

‘Where are we going?’ Kurt grabbed hold of the handle above the door to force himself down into the hard seat and stop himself from hitting his head on the tin ceiling any more.

‘Outta town.’ Toad took a sharp left and Kurt smacked his head on the window.

‘Are you _trying_ to kill me?’ he demanded.

Toad gave him an ironic look and shook his head, rolling his eyes before looking back at the road. The unspoken reply hung in the air and Kurt had the good grace to blush a little under his fur.

As they sped out past the edge of the urban sprawl and into the suburbs, Kurt found himself watching Toad’s face more and more and the road less and less, as he accepted that the other mutant was actually a good driver.

His rival’s long brown hair kept swinging forward every time he checked the blindspot, and every time it was irritably pushed back, black eyes narrowing in a scowl. The pale fingers that gripped the steering wheel were more thickly webbed now, and white either from cold or tension. Kurt’s eyes swept over the markings on Toad’s skin, how they made it look like he was sitting in dappled shade. The overall impression was somehow artistic.

‘Yo, what you staring at dawg?’ his driver snapped and Kurt laughed again. The words were so familiar, that accent and idiom, that voice, all something he knew as well as his own skin, all somehow so deeply welcome. Perhaps there had always been a certain ease in Toad’s company; the knowledge that he didn’t have to hide all of that repressed anger and hurt and internalised hate. That they could just let it out, let loose on each other. That they were so evenly matched it didn’t matter if they went all-out. They’d both come away limping but okay.

He looked back at the road, aware of the small smile dancing around his lips as he said, ‘Nothing.’

He hadn’t even realised he had gone back to staring until Toad glanced at him irritably and snapped again,

‘You’re makin’ me fuckin’ shifty, dawg. Seriously, knock it off.’

‘Vhy are you helping me?’ Kurt blurted.

Toad rolled his eyes and sighed in a long-suffering sort of way. ‘Once again, Fuzzy, I didn’t know it was you put up all those flyers.’

‘Ja, but now you do,’ Kurt pointed out.

Toad didn’t reply for a moment, staring fiercely out through the windscreen. The sun broke through the clouds and lit up his knuckles on the wheel. ‘Don’t have nothin’ better to do today,’ he muttered.

Kurt smiled again, confident enough now to let go of the handle above the door and rest his elbow on the frame, his chin on his hand as he peered out at the big, unturned yards they were passing, some of them still decorated with pumpkins and skeletons or ghostly sheets and crooked witches, all stuck into rotting hay bales. Half the houses whose decorations had already been taken down had one or two bales sat out on the sidewalk, stolidly waiting for the garbage truck.

‘How long do you think it will take for them to take all those down?’ he asked idly.

‘Shit.’ Toad slammed on the brakes, and Kurt scrabbled for the handle again. ‘I’ve been a fuckin’ idiot, man. Fuckin’ hay bales.’

‘Hay bales?’ Kurt asked, nonplussed.

Toad stared at him incredulously, his red irises stark against those black eyeballs. ‘You really don’t know what you’re fuckin’ doin’, do you?’

Kurt’s fur rippled in indignation. ‘I know some things,’ he insisted. His accent always got stronger when he was angry. ‘Why are hay bales so important?’

‘Compost, dude,’ Toad said, opening the door and hopping out. ‘They’re free an’ they rot down just fine. Better than lettin’ them go to the dump, yeah? Thought you lot were all about recycling.’

‘Who’s “you lot”?’ Kurt asked as he swung out of the passenger door.

‘Fuckin… X-Geeks, man. And fuckin’ eco-shitheads who wanna start up fuckin’… community gardens.’ Toad approached an abandoned hay bale on the sidewalk. ‘Come on, I don’t wanna carry this by myself.’

Kurt smirked. ‘No need.’ He laid one hand on the hay bale and ported himself, the bale and a startled Toad directly into the bed of the pickup.

‘I told you to fuckin’ warn me, Fuzzy,’ Toad griped before climbing out of the truck bed and dropping to the ground like an insulted cat.

‘You should be used to surprises by now,’ Kurt replied calmly. He ported out of the truck and right beside Toad on the sidewalk, making him squawk in shock.

Toad glared at him. ‘If yer gonna be that way, _you_ can go round picking this shit up. I’m gonna have a smoke.’ He stalked around the truck to the back and let down the tailgate to perch on while he lit up.

Kurt rolled his eyes but nevertheless spent the next two minutes porting around the neighbourhood, gathering up any abandoned bales, half-filling the truck bed with the greying yellow bundles before Toad had even finished his cigarette. If he was honest, he was showing off a bit. It wasn’t often he saw anyone from the old days anymore.

At last, Toad finished his cigarette and tucked the stub into his back pocket again. Weird habit, but Kurt supposed it was better than him just chucking it on the ground. As Toad heaved the tailgate back into place and bolted it in, Kurt ported once more to land on the bale just in front of the other mutant, a half-eaten Grim Reaper in his outstretched hands.

‘Boo!’ he crowed, and Toad reeled back with a curse.

That green tongue lashed out and snatched the puppet from Kurt’s hands, leaving slime on his fingers for good measure.

‘Christ, yer still a fuckin’ fifteen year old, dude,’ Toad said disgustedly.

‘Oh, und you vere the pinnacle of maturity, throwing hands in ze park,’ Kurt laughed.

Toad threw the mauled Reaper at Kurt and hopped over his head, toward the front of the truck.

‘C’mon, dawg, we’re burnin’ daylight!’

The rest of the afternoon passed swiftly. Toad drove them out to a few garden centres and lumberyards and filled up the truck with woodchip, pouring it in around the bales and even slinging a few pallets in the back.

They drove back to the empty lot and Toad just backed the truck right up against the fence, blocking the road, and poured it all out of the back onto the ground.

They argued for almost half an hour about where to put the growing borders, and Kurt was amused by how heated Toad got on the subject, waving his arms as he gestured emphatically to where the lines _should_ go. Kurt eventually gave in, reluctantly admitting that Toad was right. His only real worry was making sure the paths were wide enough for wheelchairs.

‘Why, you thinkin’ of inviting baldie down to dig up turnips?’ Toad snorted, raising yet another cigarette to his lips. How had he not burned through them all yet?

‘Nein,’ Kurt replied forcefully, ears momentarily flattening slightly to the sides of his head. ‘I just don’t vant to chase people away, y’know.’ He winced. Even he had caught the accent slipping that time. It had softened a lot over the years, so he didn’t normally pronounce his ‘th’s as ‘z’s so much, but sometimes it came back. When he was angry, or nervous. ‘I vant this to be somewhere for _everyone_.’

Toad stood, slouched and staring at him, and sucking on that damn cigarette like it was a snorkel and he was a foot under. He didn’t seem to know what to say.

‘Look, Toad,’ Kurt started.

‘Don’t fuckin’ call me that, dawg.’ Toad snapped, eyes narrowing. ‘I ain’t a fuckin’ toad, I ain’t a fuckin’ animal any more’n you are.’

Kurt faltered. ‘Todd?’

Toad kicked a small stone across the frozen ground so it bounced off the wall. ‘S’ Mortimer now. Bein’ in hidin’ and all.’ He seemed to hesitate. ‘Todd’s fine. Just… don’t go spreading it about.’

Kurt watched the other mutant as he turned away and went to grab a sack of newspaper. That defensive hunch to his shoulders hadn’t lessened at all since they last laid eyes on each other. He found himself wondering what exactly his rival had gone through in the intervening years, but he accepted the tacit suggestion of trust, and mutely went to grab a sack full of paper too.

After only a few minutes of spreading the paper thickly on the ground in the areas to become planting beds, they’d fallen out again over the layout and Todd stormed back to his truck, sweeping the pallets out onto the ground and kicking them apart. Kurt left him to it and continued laying the paper down. Let him smash them, who cared? It wasn’t like he was kicking _him_.

Only a few minutes later, Kurt heard the truck rev and the rattling of it driving away. He stood and sighed heavily. Well, it had been nice while it lasted. Sort of. He glanced behind him and saw to his surprise that Todd had left the pallets dismantled in a pile, every board intact. Maybe the guy really had turned over a new leaf if he did that even while pissed off. Kurt started to feel the hints of that good, old-fashioned Catholic guilt. He should have been more patient. It wasn’t like Toad – Todd – had been stepping on his feet. He’d been doing the opposite, actually – helping him to get this stupid dream of his set up, even though there wasn’t much in it for him. Unless he had some secret passion for gardening.

He hadn’t even got his number. Or address. But he knew where he worked, so maybe that was something, if it wasn’t too creepy to show up there. It probably was. Maybe that was all the time allocated to them: one weird day of catching up, fighting and laying groundwork for the garden. Kurt couldn’t bring himself to regret it. That was how this sort of thing was supposed to work, right? Do the work you can, hope others do what they can, and catch the moments as they passed?

He was interrupted in his thoughts by the sound of a loud engine approaching.

The pickup reversed gratingly down the street and swung in to park between two vans. Toad killed the engine and hopped out and over the fence. He caught Kurt staring at him and held up one hand defensively. ‘Needed to get a drill, dawg.’

Kurt wisely chose not to respond and merely started ferrying woodchip and hay back and forth in a plastic bowl he’d found half-buried by the fence. In less than twenty minutes, Todd had knocked together three enclosures, two roughly three foot squared and a foot high and one three by six.

‘Yo, where you want these? Since you’re so set on where they should go,’ Todd muttered.

Kurt stood and dusted off his knees, and spent a few seconds just looking at Todd, trying to figure him out. Then he spread his arms and smiled, trying for conciliatory. ‘Wherever you think they’ll go best. I trust you.’

Todd pulled up at that, staring wide-eyed for half a beat before Kurt had the sense to look away. But as he turned back to spreading woodchip, he heard Todd shuffling the planters around and smiled to himself, sharply aware of the fangs he usually tried to hide.

The sun descended swiftly toward the horizon, the encroaching dark bringing a bitter wind with it. Kurt hurried to spread the last of the hay over the paper covering the bottom of one of the planters before it got any colder and he really lost sensation in his ears. Hands appeared in his peripheral vision and he looked up to see Todd pouring the last of the woodchip over the hay. Kurt rocked back on his toes and looked, really _looked_ , at Todd.

He looked different, even beyond the obvious secondary developments of his mutation. He had always looked sallow, but something about the way his skin was drawn tight over his cheekbones looked more like too many hungry nights than genetic bad luck. The wide mouth that had once been ready for spitting insults and grinning like it might get him out of trouble now curled in a dissatisfied, bitter twist. It looked like Kurt wasn’t the only one life had hit hard.

‘You,’ Todd said without looking as he flicked another cigarette into life. ‘Are doin’ it again, Fuzzy.’ A slight smirk played around his lips, that green tongue darting out to wet them in a way that made Kurt’s breath catch.

He looked away guiltily, then looked back. He had nothing to hide, not any more.

‘I vas just thinking… Do you want to maybe grab a drink? Get some food? My treat.’

Todd glanced at him sidelong, those black eyes less unnerving than interesting (and after all, hadn’t Kurt seen much stranger sights?).

Then he sighed, seemed to shrink into himself and that oversized leather jacket. ‘Sure, dawg. Why not?’

Kurt let out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding. He felt relieved in some way by Todd’s simple acceptance of his offer – it had been a long time since Kurt spent this much time with another mutant, and another visible mutant? Well, that hadn’t happened in years. But there was something else there too, beyond the baseline ‘freaks who look like freaks should stick together’. Todd had always been someone he could turn to when he was hurting, angry or upset. Someone who never changed. Sure, they didn’t exactly talk it out, but in their own way they’d been a form of therapy for each other, as evenly matched as they were in size and rage and fighting ability. Todd couldn’t teleport, but Kurt couldn’t use his mouth as a cement mixer, so it evened out somehow.

After everything with Apocalypse, and the slow disintegration of the Brotherhood, Kurt hadn’t known what had become of Toad, hadn’t thought for a year or two to find out. And by then it was too late. He was long gone.

‘ Sank you. For today,’ he said, standing up and stretching his back out some. Todd shrugged and remained in his habitual crouch on the floor.

‘I mean it, you know,’ Kurt said. ‘I really do appreciate your help.’ He held out a hand.

‘S’not much of a community if yer doin’ it all yerself,’ Todd muttered, standing and ignoring the hand. ‘What, we in business or something?’

Kurt laughed and dropped his hand. ‘Vell it’s either this or I hug you.’

Todd gave him another of those wide-eyed, startled looks. ‘Yeah, you’re gonna have to get me drunker than this before that happens.’

‘Come on then,’ Kurt said good-naturedly, feeling somewhat relieved. He remembered Todd’s smell well enough from school that getting close was not exactly a priority. ‘Let’s go get drunk.’ Then again, he hadn’t noticed any smell in the truck.


	3. Work Hard, Play Hard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘Todd,’ Kurt said, leaning in and smiling at him. ‘Let’s get wasted.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DIALOGUE

Once they’d dropped Todd’s truck back off at the garage, Kurt ported them both back toward the garden, and led Todd to a bar he knew did at least edible food.

Kurt slid into a stool at the bar and patted the one next to him. Todd glanced around warily at the crowded bar before slipping into it.

‘It’s safe,’ Kurt said quietly. ‘This vas one of the first mutant-friendly bars in town, back vhen ve weren’t velcome anywhere.’ Ugh, his accent really was creeping in today. It must be the nostalgia of seeing Todd. The odd thing about living in a foreign country for so long was that your own voice became strange to you. When it reverted to how you’d once been, you didn’t recognise it anymore. It was the little losses you didn’t notice; loose bits of identity dropped aside like so much sand in your pockets. He didn’t want to think about how much of him had been eroded. What was left after all that? He shook his head. Perhaps today had been about finding some of that out.

Todd nodded curtly and fidgeted with his hands, apparently staring at the dirt beneath his nails. It occurred to Kurt that this was the first time today that they’d been somewhere he couldn’t smoke.

He decided it was politer to say nothing and ordered two beers from the grinning bartender with piercings in her cheeks. She slid a couple of menus over to them and returned to chatting to a young couple further down the bar.

‘To the garden,’ Kurt said, raising his bottle. ‘And, uh, maybe to not killing each other?’

‘Yet, dawg,’ Todd said with a grin, clinking his bottle against Kurt’s and taking a long swallow. ‘The night’s still young.’

‘So…’ Kurt said, forcing himself not to stare at his companion for too long. ‘What happened to you after we… After Apocalypse. After we left school.’

‘Nn,’ Todd said, shaking a finger back and forth and taking another long draught of beer. ‘Not drunk enough for that yet. Way not drunk enough.’

Kurt wrinkled his nose in a frustrated chuckle. ‘Not drunk enough to shake hands, not drunk enough to hug, not drunk enough to answer questions, what _are_ you drunk enough for? What do you want?’

Todd shrugged expansively. ‘What can I say, I haven’t eaten in a couple days, I get cranky. Those pastries mighta helped but my body thinks it’s time to hibernate, yo.’

‘Ok, so food,’ Kurt said firmly, sliding the menu to Todd. ‘Ignore all the crossed-out stuff, it’s hard getting ingredients these days.’

Todd gave him a look that spoke volumes. ‘Nah dawg, I figured the pencil was just for decoration. Jesus.’ He rolled his eyes and looked back at the yellow paper.

Kurt already knew what he was going for, and while he waited for Todd to decide, his eyes automatically returned to their study of his companion’s dappled face. Apart from his eyes and skin, his mouth had definitely changed since they were at school, somehow wider and with lips that looked even more malleable than before. Kurt found his eyes tracing what he could see of them, following the way Todd chewed on the corner of his mouth, the way the crease between nose and lip was so deeply pronounced from the amount of skin needed to stretch those lips open. He had ridiculously strong cheekbones. Kurt liked good cheekbones.

This time, he caught himself staring and took a gulp of his beer to cover his sudden guilt. Why _was_ he staring at him so much?

‘You didn’t get away with it, in case that’s what you’re thinkin’,’ Todd drawled, and when Kurt looked back he was grinning sardonically, his beer already half-raised to his mouth. ‘You can’t sneak glances at someone right fuckin’ next to you, dawg.’

‘Sorry,’ Kurt said, the tips of his ears suddenly very hot.

Todd shook his head and took another long drink. ‘The fuck you find so fascinating, yo? I got somethin’ on my face?’ He grimaced. ‘Other than the fuckin’ patches.’ He glanced sidelong at Kurt and the grin faded into a familiar scowl. ‘Or is it the patches?’

‘Nein, nein,’ Kurt said quickly. ‘No, it’s… you just… you look different, man.’ _Man_? He hadn’t tripped on that verbal tick in well over a decade. ‘You look… You look good.’

Todd snorted sceptically and took another drink.

‘Und I _like_ the patches,’ Kurt said, finishing his beer and raising the bottle to the bartender, who quickly brought over another pair.

As he looked back, he caught sight of that open, wide-eyed expression as it faded again. It looked strange on Todd’s face. Vulnerable. What had happened to the brash, overconfident – _overcompensating_ , Kurt’s mind supplied – teenager?

‘You don’t have to believe me,’ Kurt said, sliding one of the new beers across to Todd. ‘But I do.’ He paused to sip his beer. ‘They make you look like… like you’re sat under a tree in the sun somewhere. It looks nice.’

Todd snorted again, but couldn’t hide the slight smirk that curled the corner of his lip. With a face so elastic, it was impossible to miss _any_ expression that wide mouth made.

‘Each to their own, I guess.’

‘Normally, people say “thank you”,’ Kurt said, raising his eyebrows.

Todd chuckled and turned to face him properly, leaning on his elbow on the bar. ‘I don’t think anyone could class either of us as normal, Fuzz.’

Those black eyes swept over Kurt from head to toe, and there was no mistaking the naked appreciation in that gaze. _Oh._ Despite the harsh words, Kurt felt like he’d just been stripped bare, his skin hot beneath his fur as he covered his sudden fluster by waving down the barkeep again.

Once they’d ordered, Kurt felt a little steadier. It was possible he’d imagined that look, but he didn’t think so. He decided to try to put it to the back of his mind for now, try to talk and gauge more about who the other man was now, rather than who he had been fifteen years ago. He didn’t deny, however, that looking at Todd now, he had grown up surprisingly hot. That slim frame, scrawny when they were younger, had filled out into something approaching sleekness, and while the heavy brown leather jacket didn't exactly reveal much, Todd's dark jeans were drawn tight around strong thighs that Kurt thought, mouth suddenly dry, could probably crack ribs. He swallowed the thought and tried for normalcy.

‘So are you drunk enough to do anything but grump at me now?’ he asked with a mischievous grin.

Todd smirked. ‘Getting’ there. Why don’t you start. How the fuck did you end up here? Thought you had a pretty sweet deal over at X-Geek Mansion.’

Kurt hissed a breath in through his teeth and gusted it out in a sigh, running a hand through his hair as he let it out. ‘Starting vith the big questions,’ he said weakly. ‘Ok, I see your point. I also need to be drunker for this.’

He took a deep swallow of his beer and turned his bar stool to lean back on its short back, facing Todd directly, resting his forearm along the bar. He ran his eyes speculatively once again over Todd’s strangely appealing face, allowed himself this time to wonder what it might be like to kiss a mouth like that. He held out for all of two seconds before his thoughts turned to the tongue _behind_ the lips, and he flushed to the roots of his hair and looked away, intensely grateful for his fur.

He heard Todd softly chuckle. ‘You sure are getting’ _somethin’_ outta starin’ at me today,’ that hideous Brooklyn drawl said. ‘Care to share?’

Kurt looked frankly at Todd and took a sip of his beer, letting his lips linger around the mouth of the bottle for a moment. Todd didn’t look away.

‘Does one need a reason to stare at an attractive man who’s been very kind to them today?’

This time he was expecting it: the slight widening around the eyes, the tilt of the eyebrows and tension in the little muscles above those ridiculous cheekbones. But Todd wiped it away even faster than before and glanced away quickly. Kurt felt a small smirk curl around his lips, a little flutter of pleasure in his abdomen. Maybe he could fluster Todd, too.

‘I wasn’t bein’ kind, dawg,’ Todd insisted, looking back at him, and Kurt did not fail to notice the slight deepening of colour in his cheeks, the way the markings stood out a little more starkly against the skin surrounding them. ‘Fact, I had fuckin’ _ulterior motives_.’ He grinned almost lasciviously.

Kurt laughed. ‘Why, does Magneto want more fresh vegetables?’

Todd’s reaction was as intense as if he’d hit him. ‘Don’t fuckin’ say that name, dawg,’ he hissed, cringing down and staring wildly over his shoulder. ‘Not with me around, not with other people around.’

‘Sorry,’ Kurt said. He reached over and gripped Todd’s forearm where it was braced against the bar. ‘I’m sorry. Zat vas thoughtless.’

‘Yeah, it was,’ Todd said pointedly. Then a ripple seemed to run over his skin and he shook his head, obviously pulling himself back into the present. ‘But no, dawg, my ulterior motives are all my own.’

Kurt was saved from having to answer that by the arrival of their food. He was glad that the place wasn’t so busy they couldn’t eat at the bar. Somehow sitting side by side among several others felt a lot less like a date than sitting across a table in a dingy corner.

Meals were strange these days. A hodgepodge approximation of what they had been before the world started circling the drain even faster. Ingredients would become available for a few weeks, then heavy rains or fuel shortages or just the mundane turning of the seasons would remove them from circulation again just as quickly. But some things were a constant. Potatoes, flour. The US had grown too much wheat for too long to ever escape its blonde clutches.

There was always meat of a sort, whether the kind that came from cows or rats or just the ground up approximations of mushrooms and starch. Dried fruit ran rampant, the only reliable source of sweetness when shipping went sour for sometimes months at a time.

Fungus was the in-food now. With just a cardboard box and some spores, you could grow whatever you wanted. Within reason. Herbs, everyone grew on their windowsills. People understood more, now, about the wars over spice, why the silk road went where it did. Humans will do anything for flavour.

And Kurt was no exception. He loved food with a visceral passion that left most other interests eating dust, even if he wasn’t quite such a glutton as he had been as a teen. He wasn’t growing anymore, after all. But still, he bit into his burger with relish. The gamey flavour meant that there was definitely rat in there, or pigeon, but he was long since past caring about that. Everyone was, these days. If you ate meat, you ate whatever meat was offered.

Todd beside him ate a lot more delicately than he had as a teen (which wasn’t exactly hard), using hands and teeth rather than simply lashing out with his tongue and swallowing it whole. Kurt had always wondered about Todd’s throat, how it could stretch to accommodate Scott’s entire lunchbag and yet remain so scrawny the rest of the time.

Kurt tried not to watch the way Todd’s tongue occasionally darted out and snatched pieces of food from his own fingers as he raised them to his mouth, quick and fleeting and really it should have been disgusting – or at least bad manners – but it really, really wasn’t.

The dawning realisation that he was thinking about the _Toad_ like this didn’t quite floor Kurt, but it came close. He’d always known he was attracted to uniqueness – a useful trait when one was surrounded by people with wildly varying mutations – so finding something like a ridiculously long and powerful tongue intriguing wasn’t too much of a surprise. No, the surprise was that it was _Toad_. His longterm enemy and rival, who ate flies and trash and spoke like a badly-written character from the pages of a cheap New York whodunit. Who stole and sneaked and pestered people so much they wanted to throw him through walls. Whom Kurt had personally beaten black and blue on multiple occasions, though admittedly he’d also left those encounters with a limp and two black eyes more often than not.

But that had been fifteen years ago. A lot could change in fifteen years. For one thing, eating bugs didn’t mean the same thing it used to – there was a lot of protein in a mealworm, and you could breed them in your own house. He figured that even if Todd snatched a wasp out of midair in front of a stranger right now, the response would be much less disgust and more confused approval.

Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Todd pick up his now-empty plate and lick the remnants off it. He couldn’t help a grin – looked like some things didn’t change.

Kurt focused on finishing his fries, savouring each one even though they were one of the more commonly-available foods. Everyone grew potatoes, right? But he’d found that if he focused on enjoying even the things he could eat any day, it meant he never got bored with them.

‘Do you want another drink?’ he offered. He didn’t have much money these days, since leaving the X Men – despite the growing acceptance, there still wasn’t much work around for blue, tridactyl demons – but it wasn’t like he was in dire straits right now. And today was… a special occasion, of sorts.

‘Still workin’ on this one, dawg,’ Todd replied, tilting his bottle, which still held a third of its original contents.

‘Ja, but you won’t be soon,’ Kurt said, lifting his beer to the bartender again. ‘I’m getting you drunk to share all your secrets, remember.’

Todd laughed, and Kurt realised that the other man hadn’t properly yet all day, even though he’d made Kurt laugh more over the last few hours than he had in months. It sounded good. Obnoxious, grating and throaty, but right. Fitting. It sounded nothing like the nasally giggle he’d had as a teen, more like a dusty, half-swallowed cackle, and Kurt was surprised by his own desire to hear it again.

‘ _All_ my secrets might be a bit of a tall order, dawg,’ Todd said as the bartender brought them two new beers. He reached for one. ‘But you might get _some_.’

They sat in relative silence for a little while, Kurt feeling warm and full and more or less content after a hard day’s work. His body ached in that pleasant, ‘I did something to earn this’ way, and the novelty of company, even slightly irascible company, was nice.

‘I left the X Men,’ he said suddenly. Maybe it was the beginning of a third beer, or a full belly, or perhaps it was because this was the first time in _years_ that he’d had a chance to speak to someone who actually might be in with a chance of _understanding_ , of _getting it_ , someone who’d been there too, who knew, but Kurt suddenly wanted to talk.

Todd leaned against the short back of his barstool, resting the hand that held his beer bottle on the bar, sprawling slightly but obviously listening if those intent black eyes were anything to go by.

‘It took… It took me a lot longer than I’d like to admit,’ Kurt said, fumbling for the words in a mouth that suddenly felt dry and stuffy and clumsy. ‘To see how much Xavier and, and Eric are different sides of the same coin. They both want to… rebuild the world in their image. M- Eric just wants to break it first. But, um, I guess I sort of felt like I owed Charles. Maybe I still do. After all, he… Brought me to this country, gave me a home and friends and a chance at being part of something.’ Kurt knew his voice was growing steadily quieter and sadder, and he didn’t like it. He shook his head, but before he could make some stupid joke or laugh it off, Todd nodded and said,

‘Yeah, dawg. And the… inducer and all. Musta been a heady thing back then, back when we were just…’

‘Blips,’ Kurt finished. ‘Little anomalies that no one wanted.’ Trust Todd to touch on that watch – the symbol that, to Kurt, had once summed up all his hopes and dreams. As if a little holographic projector on his wrist could fix everything that was wrong with the world.

Todd nodded and drank from his beer again. ‘Yeah.’

The silence stretched taut, tacit understanding and unspoken words blooming, flourishing and withering in the space between without ever being said.

Kurt cleared his throat. ‘There vas, uh… there was an accident.’ He shut his eyes against the light that suddenly seemed far too bright. The sound of the other voices in the pub seemed to crest in a wave as everything spiralled in. He took a deep breath, held it. Exhaled. Glancing at Todd, he didn’t see sympathy, which he didn’t think he could bear right then. He saw understanding, grim but compassionate. And it gave him the strength to continue.

‘We, um… There was a mission. And it, it went wrong. Badly. A lot of people – students – _children_ – died. It vas… Todd, it was terrible.’

And just as Kurt didn’t think he could bring himself to say anymore, Todd nodded and set down his beer with a long sigh.

‘Yeah, dawg,’ he murmured. ‘I heard about that.’ His black eyes glinted with something dark and sharp. ‘The day that rained fucking fire. You know,’ he said suddenly, pushing himself upright from where he leaned against the bar. ‘Back before then, back when we were kids, I really didn’t care, y’know? About what was good or right or whatever. How could I? I was just a scrawny little kid. It was hard enough finding somewhere to eat, somewhere to live where people wouldn’t kick up shit ‘bout the way I smelled or looked or the fuckin’… Remember how I used to fuckin’ just… swallow whatever food got in range? Took fuckin’ _years_ to get past that, even when Myst- Raven was making sure we were all fed.

‘Thing is, back in Bayville… It’s not like you don’t care, right? You know that you… Y’know, you wanna be a good kid. Be the hero in your own fuckin’ story, right? But when you’re just tryin’ to stay alive and keep out from under everyone’s feet, it don’t exactly give you much room to be picky. And Ma- Eric and… Raven, they picked me up out of that fuckin’ care home and fed me, got me out from the fuckin’ kiddie fiddlers and headcases that just wanna have someone in the world they can fuck up, and they gave me somewhere I could stay. Like, longterm. And most of the time they let me be, y’know.

‘But even back then sometimes I looked at your lot – the X-Geeks – and sometimes I thought maybe you were on the right side. Maybe I’d fucked up somehow, getting picked up by the Brotherhood. But, like… Dawg, that dude is a fuckin’ psychopath through and through. Eric ain’t no better, but at least he ain’t pretendin’ nothin’. You know what you’re getting into, cos he gets off on the cape and the voice and the shitty tin helmet. But baldie? He sits in his fucking chair and speaks so quietly and is so polite and well-meaning and then he turns around and sends a buncha teenagers in to die for him.’ Todd laughed bitterly. ‘An’ you know the funniest part? They got us all thinkin’ that each other was the enemy, scrappin’ at school and shit, when all the time it was them…’

‘Grooming us,’ Kurt finished. He took a sip of his beer, uncertain of what else to do, and stared thoughtfully at Todd again. ‘You know, I don’t think you’ve said that many words to me all day.’

Todd chuckled, obviously caught by surprise.

‘I remember when we were kids you never shut up,’ Kurt continued with a grin.

‘Psh, like you can talk,’ Todd retorted. ‘Fuckin’ dancin’ on tables and yakkin’ like those fuckin’ wind up teeth.’

Kurt laughed despite himself. ‘So I’m gregarious, what else is new?’

Todd raised an eyebrow and lifted his beer to his lips. This time, though, there was something subtly different about the way he did it. Somehow his lips seemed to caress the bottle’s mouth as he tipped his head back, slender, pale throat bobbing as he swallowed.

Kurt was abruptly very glad of his fur covering any hint of the flush that he could feel erupting in his cheeks.

‘Yeah dawg, you always were a friendly fucker.’ Todd smirked for a moment before something that looked like a genuinely confused frown crept across his sallow face. ‘So how the fuck did you end up with that Sefton chick? She was shy as fuck.’

Kurt blinked. Of all the questions he’d planned for, that was not one of them. He shrugged awkwardly. ‘Vell… She asked. She vas… sweet, and kind. And she didn’t mind the fur.’ What a pathetic list of reasons to date someone. But maybe everyone’s first was a bit of a lacklustre mess. He was just grateful they’d had the good sense to end it when they did, that Amanda still thought of him fondly enough that her husband cared about him too. He was grateful to be accepted as a part of their family. He didn’t have much, and what he did was by nature incredibly special.

‘More like got off on it,’ Todd remarked. ‘She ever stop to see _you_ , or was she just freak-fuckin'?'

Kurt’s spine shot straight as an arrow. He turned and glared at Todd. He didn’t care how well they’d been getting on, that was a fucking _line_.

‘What the _fuck,_ man? Don’t fucking talk about her like you know _anything_ ,’ he hissed. ‘Amanda was – is – one of ze kindest people I have ever met, and she’s been there for me through _everything_. Don’t you fucking _dare_ badmouth her.’

Todd had the good grace to briefly look guilty. ‘Sorry, dawg. That was… yeah, that was outta line. I’m sorry.’ He took a sip of his beer and spoke to the wall behind the bar. ‘I guess I was always a bit jealous… didn’t exactly make for seeing the best in the situation.’ He laughed awkwardly. ‘It is what it is. I am sorry, though. Didn’t mean to ruffle your fur.’

‘Jealous?’ Kurt wrinkled his nose, nonplussed. ‘Of what?’

Todd turned back to him, gesturing vaguely with his beer. ‘I dunno, dawg, like everything. How many of us were there, I mean like us? Visible, like. You, me, that Daniels kid eventually… And you had… You had friends, a good place to live, even the fuckin’ sweet little girlfriend. But,’ he said, shaking his head and laughing coarsely, ‘that wasn’t even it, that’s the funny thing. Sure, I was envious of you for that shit, but… Aw fuck man, we mighta just gone past “drunk enough to share what the fuck’s been goin’ on the last decade” and rolled up outside “old secrets”.’ He laughed again, covering his eyes with one webbed hand.

Kurt remained silent, letting him speak. He wasn’t sure where this was going, and his fur was still prickling with low-grade anger over what Todd had said about Amanda, but he wanted to find out. Even if it meant calling it quits right there.

Todd collected himself and looked frankly at Kurt. ‘You really didn’t know, man? I spent like three years fuckin’ halfway head over heels for you, dawg. Like fully half the time we were in Bayville, yo.’

The sound in the bar suddenly seemed a lot quieter. Kurt stared at Todd, his heart thumping loudly in his own ears. ‘Vas?’

Todd laughed. ‘You really didn’t catch it, huh? Can’t say I blame you, dawg, I was a little shit back then. Didn’t grok it myself for about six fuckin’ months. Y’know… love was girls, right? Boobs’n’long hair’n’makeup and all. Guess you had the long hair goin’ for you though.’

‘What about Wanda?’ Kurt asked, his eyes round and staring at his old rival. ‘You were gaga over her.’

Todd barked out a laugh. ‘Yeah, dawg, I was that too. But that was easier to deal with. Kinda fell into a routine after a while. I mean, there’s only so long you can live with someone you’re fuckin’ in deep for before you develop some kinda self-preservation.’

‘She threw you through _walls_ ,’ Kurt said slowly.

‘Yeah and I prob’ly fuckin’ deserved it.’ Todd rolled his beer bottle between his webbed hands on the bar. ‘Didn’t give her a moment’s fuckin’ peace for a while there. Hell, I’da chucked myself outta a few windows.’ He looked up at Kurt and grinned, and Kurt’s stomach did a strange little flip that he wasn’t sure was altogether pleasant. ‘Maybe I had a type.’

Kurt carefully set down his beer and leaned his elbows on the bar, burying his face in his hands with a groan. ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this.’

‘A little much?’ Todd said almost sympathetically. ‘Guess it’s a hell of a bombshell to drop on a guy ten years after, huh?’

‘I… Why didn’t you ever _say_ anything?’ Kurt demanded, sitting up and staring straight at those black eyes.

Todd grinned. ‘You sayin’ you’d have come back with anythin’ other than a fist to the face, dawg?’

‘ _Yes,_ ’ Kurt said emphatically. ‘I didn’t… I didn’t feel about you that way, but I wouldn’t have… I wouldn’t have _hit_ you for it.’

‘Nah dawg, you’d have thought I was talkin’ shit, yo.’ Todd ran his fingers through his long brown hair and Kurt realised that maybe he was itching for a cigarette. ‘Even if you’da taken me seriously, so what? I ain’t in the business of spilling my heart to people when I know full well I got no chance.’

Kurt gave him a pointed look.

‘Ok, ok, Wanda was a special case, yo.’ Todd finished his beer. ‘Maybe it was easier to go all-out than hide it. Cathartic or whatever. Anyway, you had it goin’ with the nice girl and all that. Didn’t seem much point in stirrin’ the soup.’

Kurt didn’t know how to reply. It was true, he probably wouldn’t have responded well to Todd confessing a crush on him back when they were teenagers. He’d been so caught up in trying to be normal in whatever way he could that he’d buried any feelings but the platonic for other guys, though he’d definitely woken up in a cold sweat a handful of times from a dream about Scott or Evan, or even (once) Pietro.

It wasn’t until after Amanda went to college and they started to drift apart that he’d realised those weren’t feelings he could bury forever, and so they’d parted perfectly amicably, with the vague suggestion that maybe one nebulous day in the future they’d pick up where they’d left off. Instead, Amanda had gotten married and Kurt had realised that he generally actually preferred men, with a few special exceptions.

‘Hey, Fuzzy,’ Todd said, dragging his attention back from his own internal turmoil. ‘I ain’t tryna send you into some kinda guilt spiral, dawg. We’re cool. It was… it was a long time ago, ya dig?’

‘It _was._ ’ Kurt ran his hands through his own hair, unconsciously mirroring Todd’s earlier action. ‘Ok, so… What happened to you after?’

Todd grimaced sourly and resumed rolling his beer bottle between his overactive webbed fingers. He didn’t speak for a few minutes.

‘It… I dunno dawg, it wasn’t pretty. I guess around the time you left the X-Geeks I kinda… got disillusioned with the whole thing. Sure, M- Eric and Raven, they’d put me up for a few years – _put up with me_ for a few years – they’d fed me’n’all, but… I mean, the dude’s fuckin’ nuts right? We both know that. After that… After that day when all the kids got…’ He hesitated, staring intently at the bottle as though it would help him to find the words to speak.

‘After that, I just couldn’t do it anymore, dawg. I’d seen the cracks for a while, but that whole fiasco blew them wide open. Eric didn’t care how many mutants he ground up and fed into the crusher as long as he could achieve his grand utopia. Even kids. There were always… acceptable losses, and I’m fuckin’… I was fuckin’ done with that, yo.’ He looked up at Kurt, black eyes unreadable. ‘I kinda don’t believe there _are_ acceptable losses anymore, dawg. There’s those as die and those as don’t, and every fuckin’ one’s a tragedy. Fuck anyone wants to profit off that.’

Kurt didn’t reply. It was strange, hearing all of his own thoughts echoed back at him by the Toad of all people. Maybe they hadn’t been that different after all. What could have been, if they’d just had a little more patience? If he’d been a little less oblivious?

Making his mind up, he reached over and gripped Todd’s webbed hand, stilling the bottle between his palms.

Todd looked at him, inscrutable, and Kurt wondered when he’d learned such a poker face – as a teen he’d been out all over his sleeve. Or had he, really? After all, Kurt hadn’t had even an inkling that Todd’s feelings weren’t what they’d seemed.

‘Todd,’ Kurt said, leaning in and smiling at him. ‘Let’s get wasted.’

And Todd threw his head back and laughed, that throaty cackle rolling through Kurt like a burst of flame. Whatever their history, whatever Todd wasn’t saying, he _liked_ that sound. And if getting drunk with Todd was the way to hear more of it, he was absolutely fucking fine with that.


	4. Get To Know The People Around You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kurt and Todd get to know each other a little better, and maybe some old wounds start to heal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: I didn't rate this fic before because I wasn't sure we'd get this far. As of this chapter, the rating has been upped to Explicit.
> 
> TW: graphic depictions of sex, oral sex (fellatio), biting, public (or semi-public) sex/sexual touching etc.
> 
> Thanks, as always, for reading. I haven't written porn in like 6 years so please do let me know what I can improve/what works :)
> 
> Thank you to M for letting me use her 'nasty Toad in his lap' line. I just thought it was super neat :)
> 
> Also the little snark about teenagers being self centered is not a Real Thing y'all. Teenagers have it rough and I salute them for it.
> 
> I've decided this fic is basically going to become periodic snippets of what the boys are up to and how their relationship is going, because I want this to be a bit more 'slice of life' than Big Plot. I hope you continue to enjoy!

A few hours later, spat out by the bar at closing time, Kurt and Todd had retired to the roof of the garage where Todd worked, sitting on the broad corrugated iron sheets and laughing at the moon together.

‘No shit, dawg,’ Todd was saying, ‘Pietro ate that shit up. Any fuckin’ _hint_ that Daniels might be a better basketball player or athlete or whatever, he’d go fuckin’ nuts, until one day he just fuckin’ stopped. Took us three solid months to work out he wasn’t sick, they were just fuckin’.’

Kurt laughed, shaking his head. ‘I did wonder, once or twice. But never enough to really think about it.’ Looking back, he had been a remarkably self-absorbed teenager, even for an age group renowned for self-centredness.

It was nice, drinking with Todd, sharing stories and laughing about old times. It made Kurt feel almost normal, shooting the shit with an old high school buddy. Never mind that one of them was a blue, fuzzy gecko and the other a wall-clinging toad. Never mind they’d hated each other back then. Or, he thought ruefully, he’d hated Todd one-sidedly.

It was nice in more ways than one, he discovered – thanks to their heightened metabolisms, they had both hit a comfortable level of drunk and then simply hovered there, maintaining it with each drink rather than tipping over into the territory of really fucked up. It gave him a sense of security that was probably highly exaggerated. If neither of them got too fucked, they wouldn’t do anything they could regret later.

But, he mused, they’d already sped way past ‘awkward declarations of teenage love’ and ‘heavy backstories’, what else could they really get up to that was worse than that? He glanced speculatively at the man beside him.

Todd seemed as lost in thought as he was, sat in his habitual crouch, that wide, talkative mouth pursed and silent again as he gazed up at the cloudy night sky. His eyes glowed dimly, the red of his irises emanating the same soft luminescence they’d held as teens. Funny that, Kurt thought, how he’d never really thought to pay attention to the fact that they were the only two people he knew whose eyes always glowed that little bit in the dark. Another thing he’d missed. Another thing in common.

He found his eyes returning again to Todd’s mouth, mentally tracing the shape of those pliant lips, the way that green tongue flicked out, dampening them. He wondered what it would feel like to kiss a mouth like that, if it would be overstimulating or just delightfully overwhelming. He wondered how Todd kissed, with a tongue like that. How he’d cope with Kurt’s teeth.

His eyes flicked up briefly to Todd’s sharp cheekbones and those black eyes that looked like they hadn’t slept in a year. Not exactly a look he’d normally go for, but now, with the dim, shrouded moonlight highlighting the dark shadows in the hollows of his cheeks and the slight red glow of his eyes that brightened with every laugh, after a long day of settling into a new dynamic and _laughing_ , he thought that maybe Todd was actually a lot more attractive than he’d given thought to before. Weirdly attractive, yes, but attractive all the same. And Kurt had always had a thing for uniqueness. His eyes drifted back to Todd’s lips. A quiet thrill of arousal prickled through him as he imagined leaning in, catching that soft-looking lower lip between his teeth, running his tongue across it before…

‘If you keep staring at my fuckin’ mouth I’m _gonna_ kiss you, dawg,’ Todd said, flicking an amused glance sideways at Kurt as he lit another cigarette, the zippo flaring briefly in the darkness. It sounded like an idle threat, but the glint illuminating Todd’s eyes said that was all show.

Kurt flushed to the roots of his hair and became sharply aware of his own heartbeat. Something in his chest went into freefall. And this time it definitely wasn’t unpleasant. His tail curled tightly around his own ribs as he met Todd’s half-laughing gaze. The moment stretched out, long and taut, and for a dizzying moment Kurt thought Todd was actually going to follow through on that threat, thought maybe he himself would jump the gun and get there first.

But then the other man looked away, relighting the cigarette that had gone cold in his hand, and the tension ebbed again.

‘So…’ Kurt cast about for a subject to fill the vacuum that had suddenly appeared between them. ‘When did you realise you were bisexual?’

Todd snorted and momentarily raised his eyebrows, sucking in a breath before answering. ‘I don’t know what I am dawg, I just notice people.’

Not the right question.

Kurt shrugged and leaned back on his hands, uncurling his tail from around his waist and letting it lie comfortably along the roof behind him. ‘I tried not to think about it for a long time,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want to be any… less normal than I already was.’

Todd laughed and sucked in a quick breath of smoke. ‘Yeah I hear that. I was kinda the opposite though – figured if I didn’t give a shit I’d be more likely to meet someone who’d look past the rest of me and… I dunno, see the possibilities of a twenty foot tongue?’ He barked out a laugh, and it sounded merry enough on the surface, but the undertone was bitter, bitter as black coffee, and Kurt wondered how many people had looked past even the possibilities and seen _Todd_. ‘Not like it made much difference, yo. Bein’ a teenager fuckin’ _sucked_ , man.’

Kurt was inclined to agree. He laughed too. It was easy to laugh together. It felt good. ‘I didn’t really come to terms with it until I was twenty one or so. Got out of my shell, banged a few guys who liked the whole… fur thing. Freak-fuckers, like you said.’ The phrase twinged for a moment. It was a hard thing to admit, remembering that time. He’d been so lost and unsure and desperate for any kind of affection that he’d wound up in some places he probably shouldn’t have. At least that phase had been a short one, the damage minimal. And there had been some gems in amongst the dross, people he still remembered with a fond smile. He hoped that Todd could say the same. That there _had_ been at least a few people who’d seen him, rather than his tongue and superhuman flexibility, that there _were_ more people like that out there than the handful Kurt had encountered himself.

‘Yeah, I get you. Guess I did the same at one point or another.’ Todd grinned. ‘It was fun while it lasted, though.’ Well, that answered that. ‘Once I figured out what was up with my skin and soap’n’shit, things got a lot easier.’

Kurt stared. Why hadn’t he thought of that before? Of course amphibious skin didn’t do well with soap. He really had been as self-absorbed as they came.

‘Dude, what is it this time?’ Todd asked exasperatedly, throwing his hands in the air. ‘ _What_?’

‘I’m not staring at you,’ Kurt said quickly before doubling back. ‘Ok that’s a lie. I wasn’t… Ah fick.’ His tail squirmed agitatedly behind him. ‘Look, I’m drunker than I normally get, you’re really cute and it’s literally just hitting me how gottverdammt ignorant I vas back then, ok?’

Todd cackled. ‘You were a bit of a fuckin’ idiot sometimes.’ But the harsh words were softened by something Kurt didn’t want to put a name to, something that felt warm and welcome, something that leeched the weight out of them. He reached over and lightly punched Todd’s shoulder.

‘Takes one to know one, dummkopf.’

Then he smiled and looked away, out over the city. It was surprising, really, how easy things felt between them. Even with the nervous fluttering in Kurt’s stomach, it felt… well, it made sense. Sure, Todd was flighty – chattering and laughing one minute and taciturn the next, first flirting outrageously and then shying away – but there was a cadence to it that Kurt could follow. It wasn’t game-playing. There wasn’t any intention behind it. It was like a tide - just the natural rhythms of a person used to surviving and dealing with more revulsion than even most other mutants would ever experience. Yes, Kurt could definitely understand that.

He tucked his knees up to his chest and rested his chin on his arms across them. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and he meant it. ‘I’m sorry I vas never… I didn’t give you the time you deserved back then. This evening has…’ he trailed off. This wasn’t a goodbye, and he didn’t want to make it sound like one in case Todd just took off. The guy was just a bundle of frayed nervous energy. ‘It’s been really nice, Todd. I appreciate your help today, a lot, and I’ve really enjoyed this evening. I’m sorry I wasted so much time fighting you.’

He wasn’t sure what he expected, but Todd bursting into raucous peals of laughter wasn’t it. Kurt stared at the dark silhouette of the man beside him. His head was thrown back, throat fully exposed as he cackled into the night, a webbed hand deftly snatching up the burning cigarette before it fell in his lap. It was infectious, and Kurt found himself laughing along with him, even though he didn’t know why. Maybe it just felt nice to laugh with someone.

It took a few minutes for Todd to slow enough to speak. ‘Dawg, really? That’s all fuckin’ water under the bridge, yo. That was _fifteen years ago_. I moved on, man.’ He laughed again. ‘Wasn’t like I didn’t give as good as I got neither. I coulda pulled up, too, stopped diggin’ at you but honestly? It was just too much fun lightin’ a fire under your tail, yo. You took everythin’ so fuckin’ seriously, dawg.’

Now it was Kurt’s turn to laugh. ‘You’re the only person who thought so,’ he said with a grin, turning his head to look at Toad. ‘Everyone else was all… “Kurt, you’re too goofy”, “Kurt you never take anything seriously”, “you need to _get serious_ ”.’ That last he said in a fairly close imitation of Scott’s stern voice, and Todd snorted.

‘Uncanny, yo. You ever hear from that lot these days?’

Kurt shuffled uncomfortably and sat up to stare aimlessly over the darkened city. Streetlights were flickering off in the districts where they were still on, part of the energy-saving measures. Midnight. ‘Sometimes,’ he said quietly. ‘Kitty sometimes calls. Rogue, well… She’s my sister. You know how she is. We don’t talk for months and then all of a sudden she’ll come to town and it’s like nothing’s changed. It’s nice to have that with someone,’ he admitted. ‘What about you?’ he asked, tucking his head onto his folded arms again and eyeing Todd.

The other mutant sat in his habitual crouch, looking, as always, almost ready to spring away. Smoke curled out of his mouth and clouded briefly around his head before a vagrant breeze whisked it away. The glow of his eyes was more visible now in the darkness, the only light aside from the cherry end of his cigarette and the inconstant moon. His dappled skin looked eldritch and strange in the sporadic drifts of silvery light, somehow magical, and Kurt had to fight back the urge to reach out and run his fingertips over the sharp line demarking the difference between dark and pale skin under Todd’s cheekbone. That freefall sensation in his chest came back full force and he decided right then that consequences be damned, yes, yes he really did want to find out what it was like to kiss that broad mouth.

‘Not anymore,’ Todd said eventually, stubbing out his cigarette and laying it to one side unfinished. ‘After I split, I cut ties with everyone, y’know. Can’t exactly be in hidin’ if Daddy’s little helpers know where I am.’

‘That sounds hard,’ Kurt commented. It was difficult enough not having the close relationships he’d come to rely on. It would be a lot worse if he couldn’t even speak to them again. He tried to focus, to listen rather than fantasising about leaning in and finding out what Todd tasted like other than cigarettes. They were, after all, having some kind of heart to heart here.

Todd shrugged, trying to pass it off, but his lips flattened into a grimace for a moment. Kurt could see that this was a deep wound.

‘Yeah, well. It was necessary. Can’t keep stayin’ mad about it.’

Kurt smiled tiredly. That was a very familiar line to him.

‘Hey,’ he said, shuffling closer. He wanted to reach out and touch Todd, take his hand or pull him into a hug, but he held back, unsure of the other man’s reaction. He stopped just shy of him and leaned back on his hands. ‘They might not, but _I_ know where you are now. And…’ He paused. ‘I vould like to be friends.’ Friends could fancy the pants off each other, right?

This time it was Kurt’s turn to feel eyes on his face. He turned and caught Todd’s black eyes surveying him, narrowed as though figuring out a complex problem. They lingered on Kurt’s mouth for a beat too long and, oh, Kurt recognised _that_ look, pupils dilating just a little, the quick dart of a green tongue over pale lips, even if it had been a long minute since the last time someone looked at him like that. It sent a delicious shiver rippling across his skin, hot and cold. He suddenly felt hyperaware of every nerve, the exact inch or so of air between their hips and knees, the way Todd’s hair cascaded down over his shoulders and made his fingers itch to tangle in it.

He glanced down at Todd’s lips, held carefully neutral, and that was enough. The freefall became a roaring plunge. He leaned in and closed the gap between them, catching Todd’s mouth in a soft kiss. The other man stiffened, hissing in a quick, deep breath before shakily letting it out, his whole frame shuddering, and Kurt pressed closer, sliding one hand up into Todd’s brown hair and gently raking his fingernails up his smooth neck, pulling him more firmly into the kiss. And it wasn’t a cacophony of beauty, it wasn’t like absolution or fireworks or waves crashing, but Kurt could feel those cool, pliant lips parting against his, taste Todd’s hitched breath on his tongue, and _feel_ the pulse hammering in that pale green throat, and it was better by far because it was _here_ and it was _real_ and it was _now_.

Then Todd’s webbed hands were on him, one dropping onto Kurt’s knee and squeezing, running lightly up his thigh and back down, the other tangling in his short, dark hair and bunching tightly in it, tugging him in even closer and sending sparks of pleasurable pain chasing down Kurt’s spine. He gasped, and Todd took full advantage of it, sliding his strong, green tongue into Kurt’s mouth and along Kurt’s own, grazing Kurt’s lower lip with his teeth and suckling on it before his tongue dived into Kurt’s mouth again. Kurt moaned softly and clutched Todd’s hair in his fingers. He hadn’t expected this depth of intensity, Todd’s lips pressed hard to his, the way the slide of their tongues together felt like electricity lighting up every fibre of his body. He half-turned, pulling away from the kiss for a few seconds to roll up to kneeling and come back, pressing forward between Todd’s spread knees, hands braced on those strong, hard thighs.

Todd’s hands found his shoulders and braced there, one snaking quickly back up into his hair to scratch lightly at his scalp, gripping his hair firmly and anchoring him so Todd could ease those broad, soft lips over his own, slowing the pace and kissing Kurt with lips and tongue and teeth so passionately his head spun with it.

Kurt wasn’t sure he’d ever quite been kissed like this before, Todd’s unusual mouth aside. This was the kind of kiss you got into after years of desire had built up into something so far past the border of ‘given up’ that it came back around to deep, pure want and driving need. Somewhere in his chest, something fluttered, nervous and uncertain, almost unable to believe that someone really meant him – _him_? – when they kissed like this.

But Todd wasn’t messing around. His long tongue swirled around Kurt’s in a way that felt so utterly filthy that Kurt couldn’t help moaning into his mouth, the thought of that tongue moving like that elsewhere making his knees weak. He was very glad they were more or less sitting down, because he didn’t think he could have remained standing right then.

Then that sinful mouth withdrew, smearing wet, sloppy kisses along Kurt’s cheek and across to the lobe of one pointed ear, catching it in his teeth and tugging lightly. Kurt’s hands gripped Todd’s knees spasmodically as his eyes flew wide open. That shouldn’t have felt so good, so intense, but something about the way Todd’s tongue was curling into his ear and lapping up its pointed edge made his breath catch. He bit back another helpless groan and Todd nipped sharply at the sensitive skin in the hollow of his jaw.

‘Don’t do that,’ he murmured in Kurt’s ear, dark and low and _wet_ and _hot_. ‘I wanna _hear_ you, dawg. Wanna _see_ you.’

And Kurt’s whole body shuddered with want, his dick stiffening inside his thankfully loose pants as a very-not-bitten-back moan clawed out of his throat. He found himself intensely glad that he’d foregone boxers that day, as usual. It was definitely a lot more comfortable to have a hard-on that didn’t get helplessly pinned to your leg on arrival.

Todd’s mouth continued down the long line of Kurt’s neck, biting sharply and then soothing away the pain with those soft lips and devilish tongue. If not for the fur, Kurt knew his whole neck would be visibly purple the next morning. Thank God for small mercies.

‘Ah, if you keep – ah – doing zat, you’re going to get hairballs,’ he pointed out, feeling like an idiot but wanting to give fair warning.

‘Don’t care,’ Todd mumbled into his neck, sucking on the angle where his shoulder and neck joined in a way that made Kurt gasp and clutch fitfully at his legs, desperately, silently begging him not to stop.

Todd’s voice was low, rough. ‘I don’t give a shit if I’m spittin’ out fur for a fuckin’ week, dawg, I ain’t stopping til you tell me so.’ Perhaps the threat of unpleasant oral textures didn’t mean much to someone who used to eat food packaging in the name of expediency.

Kurt turned his face into Todd’s neck as best he could, and, yeah, he’d been right before – Todd didn’t have that weird combination of stagnant pond and unwashed-teenager stink anymore. He smelled like a lake in the sun, the flat, green smell of growing pondweed and evaporating water. He smelled earthy, like woodchip and damp newspaper and rich soil, and Kurt’s stomach flipped pleasantly as he inhaled.

He buried his face in Todd’s neck, forcing the other man to stop his mouthing as Kurt kissed under his ear, his teeth lightly skimmed over his throat, his tongue lapped at that dappled, smooth skin. Now it was Todd’s turn to let out a choked sound that went straight through Kurt and hit somewhere deep in his lizard brain. He growled lowly and dug his teeth into the join of Todd’s shoulder and neck, hard enough to leave an imprint but not enough to bruise, testing the waters of Todd’s pain tolerance, whether he would welcome the kind of biting one could only achieve with teeth like Kurt’s.

From the way Todd’s back arched straight and raggedly gasped, webbed hands snaking around Kurt and clawing blindly at his jacket, he thought that might be a ‘yes’. As if that wasn’t enough, Todd shuddered and pressed in close against him to murmur,

‘Fucking _bite me_ , yo,’

Kurt grinned, his lips tightening against that slender neck, and did as asked. He pulled the collar of Todd’s shirt aside and sank his teeth in near his clavicle, sucking hard enough for a deep purple bruise to blossom. The _sound_ Todd made then, a guttural, tearing _noise_ that seemed to rip right from his core, sent a hot blaze of arousal flooding down Kurt’s spine and through his entire body like pure light. He wanted to hear that again.

Running his nails lightly up the other side of Todd’s neck, he fisted his hand in his hair and demandingly pulled his head to one side for better access, and Todd, boneless and pliant, obediently followed. He busied himself leaving a trail of red and purple marks all the way from Todd’s ear down to the furthest point he could stretch his shirt out without tearing it off entirely, biting and sucking and soothing away the sharpness of his teeth with a soft, pink tongue.

Todd seemed to melt in his arms, and Kurt should really have _known_ he would be this vocal, should have thought that someone whose mouth used to run away with him when he was trapped would hiss and moan and keen like that, would let cut-off sentences and half-spoken praise spill from his lips like water, but he really, really hadn’t thought that far, and so it hit him like a sledgehammer, the way Todd couldn’t seem to make himself be quiet at _all_ , the way his breath hitched and let out in jagged bursts, and it was so hot he never, ever wanted to stop doing just _this_.

‘Fuck, Kurt, you feel so fucking good, your fucking _teeth_ , dawg, fuck. _Ah_ , you’re so fucking hot, wanna touch you fucking everywhere, man, wanna _taste_ you-’

Todd’s hands found their way back up into Kurt’s hair and this time it was him pulling, demanding, forcing Kurt’s mouth away from his neck to kiss him mercilessly, all sharp yellow teeth and hot, writhing tongue. On impulse, Kurt narrowed his mouth down, wrapped his lips around that long tongue and sucked it into his mouth, running his own, considerably smaller and pinker, along its length and suckling.

And then those strong, webbed hands were suddenly pushing them apart and holding them there and Kurt’s belly clenched because _shit, shit,_ he’d done something wrong, he’d fucked up, he’d made it fucking _weird_ \- but Todd laughed almost giddily and that sure didn’t sound like someone who was pissed off.

‘Okay dawg, real talk?’ Todd said, his chest heaving as he gasped in ragged pants, red irises glowing much brighter now in the darkness, just a thin band around pupils blown wide with lust. His lips were lips kiss-swollen and dark, his neck covered in purple and red bruises, the distinctive outline of a hard cock showing under his jeans and oh, if Kurt had thought Todd was attractive before, this sight blew that out of the water. All he wanted to do was lean back in and continue where they’d left off. ‘You keep doin’ that and I am gonna fuckin’ jump you.’

Kurt gave a sharp-toothed grin and reached out to take Todd’s chin between two oversized fingers, holding him still. He leaned in until their lips were only just brushing, excruciatingly close, and whispered, ‘Then I’d better keep going.’

And really, what else had Todd expected, honestly? In all the time they’d known each other, neither of them had been one to back down from a dare.

Kurt pressed their lips together again and ran his hands lightly, teasingly, up Todd’s thighs, stopping just short of where he could feel the heat of his erection through his jeans, trailing them back down again. He scratched lightly at the fabric, earning a quiet whimper.

Then suddenly, Todd was rolling backwards, out of his crouch, and tugging Kurt down with him by fistfuls of his white sweater. Kurt had to catch himself on his hands to prevent himself from flattening Todd to the roof, but then Todd was moving again, flipping them and straddling Kurt’s hips so fast he didn’t have time to protest.

Then lips were on his again, hot and hungry and demanding, and it was Todd’s turn to run light, teasing, _gentle_ hands over Kurt, scratching his nails down his neck and under the turtleneck toward his shoulders, changing tack and running them _up_ instead, digging them up under the sweater and across Kurt’s bare fur. A webbed hand traced over his ribs against the grain, trailing sensation like sparks while another raked down his chest, scratching harder and sending white heat to pool in Kurt’s belly.

As Todd’s tongue devastated his mouth, fingers found Kurt’s right nipple and pinched it, first gently and then, when he let out a surprised gasp, harder and tighter. Todd’s hips rocked at the sound and Kurt moaned as his weight shifted on his cock, trapped beneath Todd’s denim-clad ass.

‘Mmm,’ Todd hummed into Kurt’s mouth, pleased, the sound of the cat that’s found the canary. He kissed Kurt harder and then sat up, grinding his hips down into the heat of Kurt’s body.

Kurt’s broad hands flew to his hips and gripped with bruising force. Willpower, _willpower_. He knew he had it somewhere. But with Todd’s weight centred exactly over his aching hard-on, shifting and rocking like that, it was excruciatingly difficult to find.

‘I am not,’ he gasped, ‘going to fuck you on a _roof_.’

Todd grinned almost malevolently, predatorily, and leaned back down so his wide, kiss-swollen lips brushed along the shell of Kurt’s oh-so-sensitive ear.

‘Then take me somewhere you _will_ fuck me,’ he whispered, that sinful tongue flickering out and caressing the point of Kurt’s twitching ear.

Kurt’s hips bucked up of their own accord, pressing his cock hard against Todd’s thigh, and he gasped in a breath.

‘I, um, I can’t do it in one jump,’ he said, embarrassed by the ragged, desperate tone of his voice. ‘Ve have to… We’ll be hopping into a street halfway.’

Todd grinned and rolled his hips mercilessly, and Kurt could tell he was savouring the sight of him splayed out beneath him. He wanted to cover his face, hide just how gone he was, but it was objectively a bit late for that now.

‘Oh, you want me to get off so we don’t scandalise the poor little humans in the street?’ Todd asked with a grin that showed no intention of following the request.

Kurt’s head thunked back against the corrugated iron. ‘ _Yes_ ,’ he hissed, but even to his ears it didn’t sound so sure.

Ok, he thought, ok. He needed to back up here. _Did_ he want to fuck the Toad? Well, that was barely even a question by this point. The answer was a resounding _yes_. Yes, he, Kurt Wagner, really, _really_ wanted to fuck Todd Tolensky, his ridiculous childhood _rival_ , completely senseless. He wanted to take off all of those covering layers, strip him down to his weird, mottled, amphibious skin and lick and bite and suck marks all over him for Todd to see in the mirror for fucking _days_ afterward. He wanted _everything_.

Ok, so he needed to get them somewhere that was possible, as close to _now_ as humanly feasible. But Todd really didn’t seem to want to stop pinning him down and rolling his hips back and forth in that fucking _distracting_ and delicious and painfully hot way, that grin and intense black eyes positively daring Kurt to move.

Kurt struggled to sit up and pulled himself in close, anchoring himself with his hands on Todd’s hips. Two could play at this game. He tilted his head as though to kiss the nasty Toad wriggling in his lap, sliding his left hand up to fist in his brown hair as the other ghosted across Todd’s prominent hipbone. He tugged sharply on Todd’s hair, forcing his head back to expose the pale column of his throat, and, baring his teeth, lightly ran them over the thin, vulnerable skin.

Todd shuddered and a quiet, _desperate_ whimper broke free from his lips. Kurt tightened his grip and it came again. _Oh._ He liked it when Kurt pushed him around a little, when there was that low-charge undercurrent of threat. Kurt mentally logged that thought for later use and let his right hand sweep inward, pressing his palm over Todd’s clothed erection, and fuck, the sound _that_ drew sent heat crackling straight to his dick.

‘I want to _fuck_ you, Todd,’ Kurt said, barely conscious of the demanding growl in his voice as his thick fingers curled around Todd’s length as best they could. ‘I want to take off all of your clothes, press you down into my bed and make you come so hard you can’t fucking _speak_.’ It felt strange, the taste of dirty talk in his mouth after so long, but if Todd was able to gabble out strings of half-coherent praise and desire and _need_ , then surely Kurt could do something similar. If Todd was so vocal himself, he might appreciate the verbal input.

And oh, he had been _so_ right. Todd’s whole body shuddered with want, with desire – desire for _him_ – and he pressed forward needily, hands scrabbling at the back of Kurt’s sweater to pull him closer, trying to claw it up and _off_ and _yes_ , this was fucking _great_ , but Kurt really meant it. He was not going to do this here.

He stopped. Moved his hand away from Todd’s rock-hard cock, untangled his fingers from his long hair, and grabbed those slim, strong hips again, lifting upwards. ‘Come on,’ he said roughly, voice ragged. ‘Get off, I’m taking you somewhere I can get you naked, right now.’

Todd obligingly staggered to his feet and offered a hand to help Kurt up. Kurt took it and, not for the first time, noticed how long those webbed fingers really were. Oh, he was so fucking gone.

He paused to take in the sight of Todd standing under the moonlight that billowed out from the clouds again. He was all sharp angles and no softness, all firm lines and lean muscles, his lips kiss-bruised and his neck darkly mottled with lovebites. His thin chest rose and fell in urgent pants. He looked a wreck. A hot mess. Kurt grinned and stepped in close, going to slide his hand back into Todd’s hair and expose that delectable neck again – he wanted to get one more good moan out of him before they ‘ported.

But it was Todd who got the jump on him this time, curling his tongue wetly in the curve of Kurt’s ear while a webbed hand slid down _under_ his loose harem pants, and now it was Kurt’s turn to let out a surprised, choked-off gasp as long, cool fingers curled agonisingly gently around his stiff cock, so loose and teasing and unbearably _light_ that his hips jerked forward of their own accord, bumping against Todd as his hands abandoned their previous plans and clutched desperately at his shoulders.

‘You’d better bamf us outta here soon, Fuzzy, or I’m gonna swallow you down right here.’

And that did it. Humans, being in public, getting _seen_ be damned. He crushed himself against Todd as that teasing hand stroked him up and down once, and ‘ported.

The city went by in flashes. A dirty alley, an abandoned stairwell, another roof. All the while those webbed fingers squeezed and loosened, pulsing around his cock and caressing almost painfully slowly. And then, dizziness and relief and safety. They were in Kurt’s room, right beside his bed, and Kurt bodily pushed Todd back onto it before straddling his hips and pinning his wrists, covering his pliant mouth in a fierce kiss.

Todd arched up into him and returned the kiss just as forcefully, dragging Kurt’s lip between his teeth and biting down hard enough to hurt, and Kurt struggled back up onto his knees, insistently pushing that oversized jacket off Todd’s shoulders.

‘Mein Gott,’ he said as clumsy fingers fumbled with the hem of Todd’s sweater and shirts underneath because those needed to be _gone,_ right _now_. ‘You are _such_ a little shit, holy fuck.’

Todd cackled out a breathy laugh underneath him, lifting his arms and letting Kurt yank off his shirts, that holey green scarf flying off with them. ‘You love it.’

Kurt laughed as he came back down to trace his tongue along Todd’s collarbone, following the lines of his dark markings. ‘Yeah, I kind of do, actually,’ he admitted, biting down sharply below the other man’s clavicle. ‘But it’s making me remember just _why_ I used to fight vith you so much.’

‘Well how else was I gonna get you that close?’ Todd demanded, a quiet moan fluttering out as Kurt’s tongue slid across his left nipple. ‘That was some fuckin’… exquisite torture, dawg, all them close-quarter fights.’

‘Mmm, I bet,’ Kurt said, thoroughly unsympathetically, determined not to show the happy little flip his stomach had just done. He gently – carefully – took Todd’s nipple between his teeth and sucked. The other mutant’s hips bucked up into him,

‘Fuck,’ and those webbed hands scrabbled helplessly at Kurt’s soft, knitted sweater, trying to pull it up and off.

Kurt let him remove it, along with the shirt underneath, let him run those long fingers up his chest, pushing his fur up against the grain, dragging his blunt nails across his skin. Then he pushed Todd back into the mattress, pinning his hands again and nipping at his ear.

‘How many times did you start fights just to get us into this position?’ He rolled his hips for emphasis.

There it was again, that wide-eyed flash of something guarded laid bare and vulnerable, and Kurt felt a twinge of guilt, leaning in to kiss Todd before the other man could answer. This time he took his time with it, pausing for breath and coming back again, the only sound their quiet, shared breathing. He felt like he was trying to make up for something. For what? For being an oblivious teenager? For bringing up old hurts?

Todd’s shaky breath hitched, and when he spoke it was in a raw, open wound of a voice. ‘Just once.’

And suddenly Kurt remembered. He could see it so clearly. The day Todd had bugged him incessantly all day, snatching his chair out from under him with that tongue, throwing spitballs in his hair, stealing half his lunch, obviously trying for a fight. And then when they had met under the bleachers in their usual spot for that sort of physical disagreement, he’d launched himself at Kurt like the devil was on his back.

But then, once Kurt had him pinned to the ground much as he was currently pinned to the bed, that scrawny teenaged body had just gone completely limp, like a frog before a predator, and those wide, pale eyes hard stared up at him in what Kurt thought was just the panic before a punch. But worse, he’d gone silent. To Kurt’s shame now, he’d hit him anyway before stalking away muttering about the audacity of stupid American teenagers.

Kurt covered Todd’s mouth with another soft kiss, and glowing eyes met briefly.

‘I’m sorry I hit you that day,’ he said quietly.

Todd rolled his eyes so hard Kurt wondered if it had hurt, and then with practised determination, he flipped them so he knelt between Kurt’s legs, bracing his arms on either side of his head.

‘If this gets any more fucking emotional you are seriously gonna kill my boner,’ he said with a fond smirk that the contours of his mouth didn’t let him hide. Then those wide lips were on Kurt’s again, demanding and greedy, and the slide of Todd’s tongue in his mouth brought forth another moan that was almost a whine in its neediness.

‘Now _that_ is a good sound,’ Todd murmured, slipping sideways and kissing and nipping his way down Kurt’s neck and collar, down to his chest. ‘I _definitely_ want to hear more of those.’ He spent the next few minutes lapping and biting at Kurt’s nipples until he was a writhing, moaning mess of want and desperation. He was so hard it _hurt_ and the way Todd was lightly rocking his hips back and forth, his abdomen pressed firmly against Kurt’s dick, was unbearable.

‘Fuck, Todd, you’re killing me here, man,’ he gasped out. ‘I want you so fucking bad.’ A little encouragement couldn’t hurt, right?

Todd’s face tilted up to look at him and those black eyes positively _smouldered_. ‘Say that again,’ he said in a tone that brooked no opposition.

Kurt lifted his head to stare directly into the other man’s eyes. ‘I want you, Todd. Really fucking badly.’ He bucked his hips up and grinned. ‘In case you couldn’t tell.’

Todd’s mouth stretched in a smile that Kurt realised he _really_ wanted to see more of, and shit, maybe this was something more than he’d gotten in for, something that suddenly felt like the floor opening up beneath him and going into freefall again, something that suddenly shook through him like one of Avalanche’s tremors, but then Todd was sliding down his body and hooking his fingers under Kurt’s pants and there wasn’t much room for thinking much of anything anymore.

Todd nestled between Kurt’s legs, his brown hair falling messily into his eyes as they glinted dimly in the darkness. He swept it back with one hand as the other grasped Kurt’s cock – firmly this time – and slid slowly up, long fingers lingering at the tip before sliding back down, gently pulling back his foreskin before slipping back up again.

And then those soft, bruised lips slid down over the head of his dick and the world narrowed down to pure, devastating sensation.

Todd took him in all the way to the root, swallowing his dick like water in the desert, and of _course_ that throat could handle it, could just deepthroat without a moment’s notice, like it was nothing, like it was air. Kurt’s hand slipped down and tangled in Todd’s hair, and the other man made that fucking _whimper_ again, that needy half-whine that just begged to be pushed, pulled, made to obey. Kurt’s tail wrapped tightly around Toad’s leg, squeezing as though hanging on for dear life.

Todd’s other hand dragged blunt nails up through the fur of Kurt’s stomach and flattened on his chest, holding him down as he began to bob his head, pulling up almost all the way and then sinking back down. His throat constricted and squeezed around Kurt’s cock, and suddenly that hot, green tongue was wrapping around his entire length and _writhing_ and _squeezing_ and Kurt had definitely never felt anything like _that_ before, holy shit.

His hands caught fistfuls of Todd’s long hair as that mouth slipped up and down the length of his dick like it was made for it, like this was something they should have done _years_ ago. Todd moaned around his cock as Kurt’s hands tightened in his hair and those blunt nails suddenly dug into the flesh of Kurt’s chest, scratching down across his belly to cling tightly to his hipbone. Kurt’s tail wriggled loose and started stroking in shaky passes across Todd’s dick where it was trapped under his jeans. The other mutant’s rhythm stuttered, tongue going slack and pulling up for a moment before he sucked Kurt in again and continued with renewed fervour.

Then both of those webbed hands crept up, scratching lines in Kurt’s fur against the grain, making him toss his head and moan with a fervency he couldn’t even begin to feel self-conscious about as Todd kept working his dick over with his mouth alone. Todd’s fingers squeezed and pinched at his nipples, sending little shocks of hot arousal flaring through him like sparks.

Todd’s tongue felt like it was everywhere at once, swirling around Kurt’s entire length, lapping teasingly at the tip, pulsing against the underside just below the head before sucking him in deep again. It was an embarrassingly short time before Kurt’s hips faltered and lost their rhythm, his hands tightening in Todd’s hair.

‘Ah, Todd, _fuck,_ ’ he moaned. ‘I’m – ah- close, so fucking close.’

He’d thought that Todd would pull away, finish him off with his hand, but no, of course he didn’t – because when had Todd done anything he expected today? – and those red irises glowed brighter, locking onto his as Todd slid his mouth _down_ , throat working as he swallowed around Kurt’s dick. When Kurt’s orgasm hit it felt like a grenade going off, shocking through his entire body and flashing his vision with white heat as it pulsed through him. He threw his head back, eyes snapping so tightly shut he saw stars, a keening cry tearing out of his throat into the dark night.

Todd’s strong hands gripped Kurt’s hips as he sucked him through his orgasm, tongue slowing and eventually coming to rest as Kurt’s arched body relaxed back down onto the bed.

Kurt pushed his own hair back out of his eyes with a shaky hand. ‘Wow…’ He tried to sit up, failed miserably. Todd laughed and landed on the bed beside him, leaning on one elbow and gazing down with a look on his face that Kurt couldn’t place. Webbed fingers trailed through the fur on his chest, smoothing it down where nails had ruffled it earlier, and Kurt purred with pleasure, satisfaction curling in his belly.

Kurt caught Todd’s hand with his own, running thick, blue fingers up the backs of his palms and up his strong, thin forearm.

‘You are… really good at that.’

Todd smirked. ‘So I hear.’

Kurt smiled – the guy really was insufferable, but he kind of liked it. It was familiar. A different kind of bravado from his, but it covered the same wounds. The tide, rolling out again. He rolled too, and leaned up to kiss Todd again, slowly at first, taking his time to map out every part of the other man’s broad, sensual mouth. Then he dug his nails into the other mutant’s slender, bare hipbone and nipped at his lower lip with a sharp canine.

‘I think it might be your turn,’ he said with a grin, planting a hand firmly on Todd’s chest and pushing him flat onto the bed. He crawled over him, gently pinning his wrists to the bed again. ‘Is this okay?’

Todd raised an eyebrow. ‘The fuck you think?’ He grinned. ‘Not like you even could pin me for long when I don’t want you there.’

‘Oh, is zat a challenge?’ Kurt asked, swiping his tongue across from the point of one canine to the other. Todd’s red irises thinned as his pupils dilated. Okay, yes, he definitely liked the flavour called ‘threatening’.

Kurt didn’t give him time to reply and instead swooped down to bite at Todd’s earlobe, running his tongue over it and relishing the choked gasp that rewarded him. In his experience, people often touched you the way they wanted to be touched. As his sharp teeth worried at the sensitive skin, Todd bucked up into him, wrists straining between his fingers. His bitten-back moan resonated against Kurt’s lips. Looked like that was a yes, too.

Kurt nipped and sucked his way down the column of Todd’s throat, raising more little red marks amongst the purple bloom he’d left earlier.

‘You don’t have to be quiet, you know,’ he said, sliding his hands down Todd’s arms toward his shoulders, releasing his grip. His tongue laved over one green-tinted nipple and the other man hissed through his teeth. ‘I want to hear you, too.’ He braced himself on one hand as the other crept to Todd’s other nipple, pinching it and rolling the bead of it between thumb and forefinger. ‘I want to hear _everything_.’

He ran his nails down Todd’s chest and over his stomach, leaving thin, pink streaks colouring his dappled skin. He paused in the dip of Todd’s hipbone, circling his thumb, and Todd bucked up into him again with a quiet moan. The man’s whole body trembled.

Kurt slid down Todd’s body, feeling the soft slide of his fur against smooth, elastic skin. Todd shivered harder at the sensation, and Kurt hooked his fingers under the waistband of his jeans.

‘So you like biting,’ Kurt said almost conversationally as he pulled down Todd’s pants and boxers, letting the other man’s dick spring free into the cool air. ‘You have _very_ sensitive nipples… You like it when I threaten you, just a little…’ He flashed a grin, baring his teeth briefly. ‘You like it vhen I scratch you.’ He ran his nails down Todd’s flat stomach for emphasis as his other hand curled around his cock. ‘Vhat else do you like?’

His thick fingers tightened around Todd’s length and slipped up and down once almost idly, touch as teasingly light as the other man’s had been while they ‘ported.

‘Ah… Kurt, _fuck_ ,’ Todd moaned. ‘You’re such a- fuckin’ _tease_ , dawg.’

‘Oh yeah?’ Kurt grinned up at him, rubbing his thumb in circles under the head of Todd’s dick and pulsing his fingers, tightening and loosening, tightening and loosening. He might have had fewer than most, but he knew how to use them regardless. He fastened his lips onto the soft, pale inside of Todd’s right thigh and sucked a deep, red mark into it, grazing his teeth over the vulnerable skin before sliding his lips inexorably higher to leave another one, this time with a soft bite. Another, even higher, a deeper bite.

‘I - ah - Kurt, fucking hell, yo,’ Todd panted. ‘You’re fuckin’ killing me here, dawg.’

‘Oh?’ Kurt looked up as innocently as he could, pale, pupil-less eyes wide.

Todd glowered down at him, his cheeks flushed with a dark colour Kurt couldn’t name; red blood under pale, green skin. His thin chest rose and fell in ragged pants. ‘Don’t give me that look,’ Todd almost _growled_. A pleasant shiver ran up Kurt’s spine. ‘You know _exactly_ what you’re fuckin’ doin’.’

Kurt couldn’t hide his smile. ‘Maybe I do.’ And, deciding that he probably had teased the poor guy enough, he rose up, swept his tongue in a broad stroke up his companion’s cock and slipped his mouth down over the head.

And oh, the sound Todd made then, that sound should have been illegal, it should have been put in a fucking museum. It sent heat flooding through Kurt to the roots of his hair, his own dick twitching as it tried to get hard again so quickly after a ridiculously intense orgasm.

He sucked Todd in all the way to the root – the Toad wasn’t the only mutant who could do that with ease, especially not after a couple of years sword-swallowing in the circus – and took up a deep, slow rocking motion.

Webbed fingers tangled tightly in his hair and a litany of curses and choked half-words and sentences that went nowhere streamed out of Todd’s darkened mouth.

‘Fuck, _fuck_ Kurt, you feel so fucking good. Your fuckin’ – _ahh_ – your fuckin’ mouth, dawg. Holy shit, you have any idea how long I’ve wanted to do this?’

Kurt laid his arm across Todd’s hips to hold down their wild bucking and slid his mouth up the whole way and back halfway down, curling his fingers around the base and setting a brutally fast pace, bobbing his head in earnest. The sounds Todd was making, the filthy string of praise, all went straight to his dick, and it turned out maybe he could get hard again that fucking fast, holy shit.

Todd’s semi-incoherent babbling continued, briefly drifting into language and back out again. ‘Wanted to just rip your damn clothes off and suck your - ah - fuckin’ brains out through your cock. You’ve always been so _hot_ , yo. Spent so long thinkin’ about how you’d taste, you taste fuckin’ amazing, dawg. Your fuckin’ _mouth_ , fuck… Ohh- ah, _Christ_ , ahhh…’

Kurt _really_ hoped that this was not going to be a one-off, because maybe, just maybe, he had a bit of a praise kink and Todd’s dirty mouthings were lighting up all kinds of spaces inside him that rarely got seen. This could get addictive fast.

Todd’s slender body kept writhing beneath him and it was all Kurt could do to maintain some semblance of rhythm, swirling his tongue determinedly around the head of Todd’s dick every time he lifted up far enough before sinking back down and hollowing his cheeks around him. And then those sweet, thick-voiced, _raw_ sounds coalesced into Todd’s hoarsening voice crying out, his hands tightening in Kurt’s dark hair.

‘Oh, oh fuck, Kurt, I’m… Ah, I’m so-’

He got the message, and looked up, the gold of his eyes reflecting off the other mutant’s pale skin, straight into Todd’s eyes. His eyes were almost solid black, bright irises merely a fine ring around pupils blown like black holes. Kurt slipped his mouth down, taking Todd in all the way, keeping his eyes on him, and Todd’s head _snapped_ back, his spine arching like a bowstring, and the _keen_ he gave could have put foxes in spring to shame.

Kurt sucked him through it, his throat constricting as he swallowed around him. And then Todd’s body was relaxing, was falling back onto Kurt’s bedcovers like a ragdoll, and Kurt let his softening cock slide out of his mouth and swallowed the last remnants of his spend.

He crawled up Todd’s skinny frame, feeling suddenly heavy and warm. The feeling of that smooth skin, slick with sweat against his fur was grounding and pleasant. He kissed Todd softly before rolling to one side so as not to flatten him entirely.

Todd’s chest rose and fell, panting like a racehorse, and Kurt reached out one thick-fingered hand to trace lightly over the line of his ribs.

Todd huffed out a laughed and wriggled away. ‘’M ticklish, yo.’

‘Are you?’ Kurt’s eyebrows shot straight up.

‘Aw no, man, not now, c’mon,’ Todd protested weakly, fighting off the return of that explorative hand. ‘Have some mercy, yo.’

Kurt laughed and instead looped his arm around Todd’s waist, pulling him back against him to spoon. ‘You get away vith it tonight.’ His jaw cracked in a deep yawn.

A webbed hand came back to comb gently through his hair.

Kurt nuzzled his nose into Todd’s hair, inhaling that strange, flat lakewater scent, now tinged with sweat and sex. It was an oddly comforting smell. ‘Will you stay tonight?’ he asked quietly.

Todd’s shoulders heaved in a slow sigh, and the hand not currently running through Kurt’s hair and lightly scratching his scalp came up to tangle with Kurt’s where it pressed flat against the other man’s belly. Kurt’s stomach clenched a little, and he was surprised by how much he hoped the answer would be ‘yes’, that the tide wouldn’t ebb just yet. The fingers in his hair stilled.

‘I don’t got anywhere to be, Fuzzy,’ Todd murmured.

‘Is that a yes?’

The strong shoulders pressed to his chest shook with a snorted laugh. ‘Yeah dawg, it’s a yes. Not like I could go anywhere anyway, pretty sure you sucked my fuckin’ brain straight out through my dick.’

Those fingers started up again, and Kurt purred, unable to summon even a little bit of self-consciousness about it. That was a sound he didn’t usually introduce for a while, once partners had had the chance to get used to… everything else. But Todd knew him almost as well as anyone could, really. He probably wouldn’t scare him off with a little quiet purring.

He became aware that Todd was starting to shiver even with Kurt’s warmth pressed up against him, amphibious skin bared to the night air.

‘Come on,’ Kurt said, lifting himself up on one elbow. ‘Let’s get under the covers and _then_ snuggle. I don’t want you going into torpor on me.’

‘That’s _lizards_ , yo.’

Kurt hummed with a smile as Todd reluctantly wriggled off the covers. ‘I’m pretty sure a lot of animals do it.’

‘Jesus Christ, Fuzzy, your pillow talk _sucks_.’

And Kurt laughed again, as he pulled the covers over them both and tugged Todd’s cool, lean frame against him. He pressed a kiss to the other mutant’s shoulder.

‘Goodnight, Todd.’


	5. Be Brave Enough To Be Vulnerable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is why we use our words.
> 
> AKA Kurt is melodramatic when sad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all, a shorter update this time. Looks like I lied, this is not going to be wrapped up today! I've finally written out a vague plan and it looks like I'm strapping you all in for another 4 chapters, taking us to 9 altogether.
> 
> I hope you like ridiculously long fics :D I certainly do, so it's time I contributed one!

When Kurt woke up, a thin beam of sunlight was shining through the crack in his ratty curtains, sparkling with gently drifting dust motes. It was early – the sun only shone through that window before 8:30am at that time of year. The morning was quiet, still. The low hum of a car drove past, dipping and rising where it went over that sunken bit of the road right outside Kurt’s apartment block. He was lucky – he was on the third storey, so he could see over the scrubby trees and out across a little part of the city where it dwindled into suburbs, living in the liminal space between urban high-rises and the beginning of the peeling, half-tumbledown picket fences of inner suburbia.

The car passed and the sound dwindled until the world went quiet again. A few birds, the distant rumble of the interstate. The calm, deep breathing of the man next to him. Kurt lay where he’d woken up, on his back with one hand resting on his own flat stomach, the other arm dead to the world where it lay on the pillow above his head. Todd’s oddly cool back was pressed against his side where he lay facing away, seemingly in exactly the same position he’d fallen asleep in.

His ribs rose, expanded, contracted again. Kurt’s yellow eyes swept over his sparse, strong frame, taking in the messy, sleep-knotted brown hair, the dappled, pale skin, the visible strength of his back. The prominent shoulder blades. Todd was strong, yes, and hardy from the look of it, but he clearly wasn’t getting enough to eat. As someone who loved food like it was akin to God, Kurt had a strong desire to see others fed too. He wondered idly if Todd might accept breakfast if he offered it.

But not yet. It was far too early for any of that. His right hand had begun to tingle above his head as blood and sensation found their way back into his thick fingers. Uncomfortable, but necessary. Wincing, he pulled his arm down to rest with its pair across his belly. A little streak of heat under his fingers reminded him of Todd’s nails on his skin last night. He must have scratched a little harder than Kurt had thought. The memory of Todd coming apart under his hands, in his mouth, sent a little thrill of arousal through him, and he smiled sleepily to himself. Yesterday had been… Yesterday had been so totally unexpected that even this morning he wasn’t quite sure how to respond to it. But he definitely didn’t feel unhappy about it; quite the opposite. A quiet, rolling purr started up in his throat and he shifted carefully onto his side, wrapping his arm around Todd’s waist and pulling in close to nuzzle his nose into that messy brown hair.

A webbed hand crept up into his own dark hair and rubbed gently for a moment before falling back down to rest over where Kurt’s hand pressed lightly against Todd’s chest. Stillness, slow breathing, the warmth of a sleeping bedfellow. The world soothingly slipped back into darkness for a little while.

-

Later, Kurt stood at the stove, frying eggs, while Todd perched on his windowsill, blowing a thin stream of smoke out into the cool air. The rising wind whipped it away so every cloudy breath was no more than a memory. The kitchen was freezing with the window open all the way, but Kurt wasn’t going to complain. After all, he had a lot more insulation than Todd (not to mention the ‘invigorating’ experience of German winters) and if the guy could be comfortable slung out in the air in only a thin sweater, he was definitely not going to kick up a fuss. Silly thought. Funny, the ways their old competitiveness cropped up. Kurt wasn’t entirely sure if last night hadn’t been the pair of them competing in some way too.

‘Wind’s pickin’ up,’ Todd commented, still gazing out at the stretch of dilapidated houses between Kurt’s window and the horizon. ‘Good thing ya got everythin’ done yesterday. Be a ballache in this.’

Kurt looked up. It had steadily started to rain.

Eventually, Todd finished his cigarette, and Kurt finished frying the eggs, and the two of them sat awkwardly on Kurt’s bed to eat, balancing their plates on their knees because his kitchen was too small for a table and his bedroom wasn’t much bigger. Normally Kurt ate leaning against the kitchen counter, or in the dry bathtub because why not? It was somewhere to be. It occurred to Kurt that perhaps his current existence was actually quite depressing.

The sound of distant cars had picked up into a quiet, consistent drone. Kurt sometimes wondered if he should buy a microphone and record samples of traffic and other ambient noises here, sell them on what was left of the Internet. People still made music, after all. People would always make music. The quiet, thunking clicks of the pipework; the occasional gurgle from the radiator; the weird scrabbling noises in the walls that could have been rats or an ungodly number of roaches. The car doors slamming outside. Kids in the street, neighbours screaming at one another. It wasn’t a friendly place, and none too welcoming, but it was a place to lay his head at night, and it wasn’t the Institute.

Todd ate surprisingly slowly and methodically. Kurt found his eyes wandering over that sharp, broad face and narrow shoulders once more. No one could call Todd pretty. But there was something there, something angular and hard and guarded. Something that drew Kurt’s gaze like a flame.

He was grateful that Todd didn’t make a point of it this time, though he knew he’d caught him staring by the subtle shift in those harsh shoulders, the way they drew up toward his ears in a defensive slouch. The man always looked like he was awaiting a punch. Kurt wondered when he'd developed that posture. Was it while he was with the Brotherhood, in their chaotic Lord of the Flies household? Or had it been earlier, back when Todd had, presumably, had parents, back before the foster houses and the care homes? How thin had those shoulders been when they first took on that defensive sharpness?

It wasn’t long, however, before the other man set aside his empty plate, grease stains glistening in the thin light from the window. Something had shifted, and Kurt felt off-balance, uncertain of which way the tide was turning. While last night it had felt like a strange kind of poetry, a fluid cadence, today it felt destabilising. He didn't know where they stood now, now that a crescendo had been reached, all that tension fled into the night like the sounds they'd made together the night before.

‘Uh, listen dawg, I gotta get goin’,’ Todd said, not meeting Kurt’s eyes. Those shoulders stayed up, stayed sharp around his ears like crenellations. ‘I got work. An’ stuff to get doin’.’

Kurt’s stomach dropped and he set aside his own plate carefully. His mind scrambled for something to say, something sharp the right shape to pry open the hard shell Todd was quickly surrounding himself with, but when his mouth opened, all that came out was,

‘Ok. Do you want me to port you back to the garage?’ His voice, carefully neutral, disgusted him. Surely he was braver than this. Cleverer. Surely there was something he could say that was better than that? Something that said all of the things he was thinking. _Thank you_ , and _I didn’t miss you before but I think I will now_ , and _stay_. Even just _I want to see you again._

Todd shook his head and shot an unreadable glance his way, leaning down to scoop his jacket off the floor beside the bed. ‘It’s coo’, dawg,’ he said. ‘What street’s this?’

‘Birch,’ Kurt replied, feeling the habitual tension in his forehead as his eyebrows drew together in a familiar frown. ‘Not far from-’

‘The garden, I figured,’ Todd finished, fishing a cigarette out of his jacket pocket. ‘The walk’ll give me time to have a smoke.’

‘Okay.’ Kurt watched Todd as his lithe, compact body stood and began to shuffle around, gathering another sweater and a worn pair of sneakers.

Still, the words wouldn’t come. Todd shrugged on his sweater and jacket and fumbled for a lighter.

Maybe it was best not to say anything. Maybe that deep quiet that seemed to have taken over Kurt’s tongue knew better than he did. What could this be, really, but what it was? The dawn had come and with it the tide had ebbed, leaving nothing but sand in its wake. Perhaps that was all this had been – a night of chaos and bright, flowing water, no more than sand slipping through their fingers. They’d been lucky, maybe, to have even that. Happily ever afters, romance that outlasted the night’s swift clutches, those were beyond such as they.

That didn’t stop it aching, though. Kurt’s tail wrapped around his own waist, as vocal as a sob. Todd’s eyes flicked to it once before he went to the door.

‘See you around?’ Kurt said, and his voice was much more hopeful than his pride would have liked to admit. Even if last night had been just one night, a fluke, a blip on the radar, that didn’t mean they couldn’t have something, right?

Finally, Todd’s eyes met his, and that wide, malleable mouth crooked in a smile, those dark eyes crinkling a little at the corners. ‘Sure thing, yo.’

And then he was gone, the latch quietly clicking shut behind him. Kurt stayed on the bed for a long while, hugging his knees and gazing blankly out of the window as the grease congealed on the plates. It didn’t hurt enough to cry, or to let himself grow dramatic about it. It just ached in that little tender space behind his ribs. Not enough to really _hurt_. Just enough to sit and soak in it for a while. To regret not having the right words to pause the tide.


	6. Trust in the Storm Grannies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reconnecting can be hard, but getting your hands dirty together helps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your patience and continued interest <3
> 
> These boys WILL learn to use their words if it kills them (as long as they don't kill each other first).

The ground didn’t crunch underfoot this time. The frost was long gone, melted under the gentle promise of a spring that was, like all the others, bound to be hotter than the one before. Christmas had come and gone, New Year too. Even the bright cordite flowers of Chinese New Year were nothing but ragged remnants of memory now. All of them spent here, alone in that tiny apartment. Kurt wasn’t naturally prone to solitude. It had been a hard winter. He thought wistfully of Germany, of his parents when they had still been alive; of the delicate snowdrops that would be beginning to show their sleepy heads under the gnarled trees, grounded in slowly thawing wood litter and creeping moss.

But here there were few trees, and fewer snowdrops. Here, the snow was thrown up into piles of grey slush, left to melt and send dirty rivulets running into the gutters. A few scrubbed gardens threw up new grass, repopulated the barren, frozen patches with fresh green. But there were few flowers. Kurt wanted to change that. Children should have flowers to grow up next to. So should adults. As he’d grown older and really thought about religion, about the temptations of faith and his place in it, about God and the men who said they spoke for Him, Kurt had come to realised that really, what he loved about Catholicism, what about it had always kept him close even in the face of other, more accepting sects, was its love of beauty. God was beautiful, and God had created beauty because He loved it. Through the eyes of God, all things were enchanting. Kurt fervently believed that creating beauty in the world, sharing it with others, was a key part of his religion, even if others didn’t feel the same.

He couldn’t really be considered a Catholic anymore anyway, not after he’d been personally excommunicated. But he could still believe, in his own way. And Kurt’s way involved flowers and paint and stained glass and noticing the little shapes in the pebbles on the pavement, the hidden spiderwebs in cracked brick that collected the dew and shone like diamonds. It meant smiling at children even when they shied away from his strange form and sharp teeth. It meant running his fingers lovingly over the worn beads of his rosary before bed, even when the words felt light and meaningless as ash in his mouth, because the sounds, the cadence, were beautiful in their own way. It meant letting his heart feel slow and heavy for a few weeks after Todd didn’t get back in contact, letting that shallow, quick wound heal as it needed to. It was taking a lot longer than he’d expected.

It meant putting up decorations in his flat and spending all of Christmas eve building a free pantry in front of his apartment building, throwing open the windows and singing all day even though he was alone. It meant making sure the pot of mulled wine and tray of mince pies he put in the new pantry were kept stocked all day, and it meant calling out ‘Happy Holidays!’ to anyone who took from it, even when they recoiled.

Sometimes faith was a lot of work. But what else was there to do? He’d dedicated the first decade of his life to survival, to making sure he kept to the rules that kept him and his parents safe; his second and most of a third to Xavier’s lost cause for lost causes. Now he was cut loose by his own hand, adrift in the world at twenty eight. He had to do _something,_ or he’d go mad. So he was acting in good faith.

He was proud of one thing, though: he hadn’t gone to Todd’s workplace, hadn’t let himself hit that level of desperation. It had been hard. He knew exactly where it was, could have ported there in a heartbeat, but he’d told himself that he was _not_ , under any circumstances, going to stalk the guy. Todd knew where he lived, he knew where the garden was, and he’d chosen not to get back in touch. That was a him problem. Not Kurt’s.

His arms stacked high with two crates, he backed carefully through the little gate he’d fitted into the fence a few weeks earlier. It was shoddy, made out of an old pallet after Todd’s example with the planters, but it swung open easily and smoothly and didn’t squeak. Kurt was quite proud of that.

He set the crates down on top of one of the planters and looked around. He’d come by every few weeks to keep an eye on the place and check how the compost was doing. Graffiti had gone up on one of the walls, a riotous explosion of colour that Kurt privately felt added to the garden rather than detracting from it. Sure, whatever font the artist had used was unreadable, but the design was still glorious in its rampant vibrancy. It brought some colour to this barren patch.

Not barren anymore, Kurt reminded himself, turning to survey the borders. He had been pleasantly surprised – they’d barely been touched. A few deep footprints, some woodchip kicked around, but it seemed that people had mostly paid no attention to the changes. Maybe that should have been disheartening, but right then it made his life a lot easier, so he wasn’t going to complain. He’d come prepared today. He was wearing a tired old long-sleeved shirt that always felt too small, one he’d worn years ago to show off the shape of his collarbones, to cling to defined arms. When he was ‘out on the pull’ as someone had once put it. Now it was just an old shirt with stains in awkward places and ragged sleeves, perfect for gardening. His legs were wrapped in similarly old, patched pants like those he’d worn in the circus, loose and easy to move in, but without the extra fabric to drag in the mud like the harems. As much as he was designed for winter, he relished the beginning of spring, the gentle warming in the air. He didn’t like being cold, having to layer clothes over his skin like he was still hiding. Kurt didn’t want to hide anymore.

He’d spent half of the last week putting up more posters and leaving flyers in the local stores, but even if anyone showed today, they wouldn’t be there for at least another hour. That gave him time to get things set up.

First he went around and raked the runaway woodchip and mud back onto the borders, then set about emptying the crates. One of them was full of tools – trowels and little handheld gardening forks and whatever other bits he had begged off elderly neighbours. Two massive balls of twine, some colourful pens and strips of wood for row-marking, a pair of scissors. The second crate held a mixture of little pots and seed trays, all with individual seedlings that he’d been slowly coaxing into life over the last month or more. Some of them he’d planted as seeds himself, gently urging them to germinate every time he glanced at the damp compost sitting in his bathroom. The rest were plants he’d either lifted from the clearance section of the gardening store or been gifted by the same neighbours who had given him their old gardening tools.

He wasn’t even sure what half of the seedlings were, but he knew they were all edible in some way. It looked like he was going to get some mystery plants later in the year. Oh well. What was life without mystery and magic? Not much.

Fifty minutes passed slowly, and with ten minutes to go until twelve, Kurt was surprised to hear the gate swing open behind him. Even more surprised to hear,

‘Hey Fuzzy.’

He whirled around where he knelt, one knee skidding in the damp soil and smearing mud across the fabric as he stared up into black eyes with red irises, into a wide, pliant mouth and dappled skin. His ears slid back as glowing eyes narrowed in a scowl, sharp teeth bared a little.

‘What are _you_ doing here?’

A strange expression crossed over Todd’s face like a cloud across the sun, like the flutter of guilt’s wings.

‘’M here to help with the garden, yo.’ The flick of a lighter, the first drag on a cigarette. Todd’s hands fumbled and nearly dropped the lighter when he went to put it back in his pocket. He was nervous, even Kurt could see that.

Kurt sighed and shook his head. It wasn’t likely anyone else was going to show this time either, and did he really want to do all of this by himself? This whole thing was supposed to be about making a corner of the world a better place, and letting his anger take centre stage was not doing that.

‘Alright,’ he said at last, and turned back to where he was carefully planting out the small lettuces he’d grown on top of the cistern. ‘There’s a tray of marigolds behind you on the planter. They’re going along the back of this border, behind the lettuces.’

‘Sure.’

They worked in silence for quarter of an hour, planting out seedlings directly across from each other. They were close enough that Kurt could have reached out and touched the Toad, but it felt like there was a glass wall between them, thick and impenetrable.

Kurt decided to take the higher ground. There was no reason they couldn’t be civil, right?

‘How are you?’ he asked quietly.

Todd looked up, startled, and Kurt caught another glimpse of that open, maybe nervous, expression before his features stilled again. He looked tired. Worn. Kurt took in the dark circles under those black eyes, the dappled skin that was now drawn even tighter over bone. Even his mouth looked thinner, lips curled even deeper into that bitter twist.

‘’M alright, dawg.’ Todd stared hard at the small hole he was digging for another marigold like he could unearth some answers there. His lips thinned even further. Kurt waited patiently, setting aside his trowel to make it clear that, even if he was happy to wait, he was expecting more than that. Todd stayed silent for a few minutes, disentangling the roots of one of the plants from the tray it sat in before carefully folding them into the soil. Finally, his hands stilled. It took several more long minutes before he looked up.

‘What do you want from me, dawg?’ he sighed, and his face had somehow become even more tired, small lines around his eyes showing deep exhaustion. ‘An apology?’ Something in his eyes flashed sharply, defensive.

‘Yes,’ Kurt hissed, and the intensity in his voice surprised him, somewhere out past the haze of suddenly unveiled anger, a well he’d _thought_ he had nearly paved over. His hands fisted in the soil. ‘You disappeared without a word. I…’ This was stupid. He was stupid for letting the Toad of all people get under his skin. He’d known what he was like, who he was getting tangled up with. It shouldn’t have hurt so much. ‘It was rude,’ he said stiffly.

‘Dawg, ain’t no one ever accused me of bein’ polite.’

That did it. It had been two months of trying not to care, to be the bigger mutant, to move on from his stupid, fleeting little crush, tell himself it was just a one night stand, and now Todd was here and planting marigolds next to him and being such a _dick_. Kurt launched himself over the lettuces and barrelled straight into Todd, knocking him back onto his ass on the wet ground in a riotous tumble of limbs.

Todd’s legs curled between them as they rolled, exploded out into Kurt’s chest and then he was flying back through the air, winded. A heartbeat, a puff of smoke, and instead he was falling directly back onto Todd, teeth bared as strong, webbed hands came up to grab his collar and wrench him to one side, flipping so he landed on his back with Todd surging up to pin him. A muffled thud of air rushing to fill a vacuum, and Kurt was the one on top again, straddling Todd’s hips and pressing the other man’s face down into the mud like they were teenagers brawling again. He grabbed Todd’s wrists and twisted them back up against his spine.

The nasty, petty part he tried to hide, to tamp down, the part that _always_ seemed to come out when Todd was around, made him lean down to ghost hot breath over Todd’s ear.

‘Still faster than you.’

Todd struggled, rolling his head to one side and spitting out dirt. ‘Fuck you, Fuzzy.’

‘Imaginative.’ Kurt pressed down harder on Todd’s arms. It probably hurt. He didn’t care.

‘Um, excuse me?’ a voice shattered their thick haze like a ball through a window.

Kurt whirled, released Todd’s wrists, scrambled up to his feet and brushed mud off his pants. There was an old woman standing by the gate, with pale white skin and even whiter hair, wrapped in an oversized purple coat. Beside her, a small, tawny brown girl about seven years old clutched her hand, big brown eyes wide as she stared at Kurt from inside a garish pink hooded sweater.

‘Hi! Can I help you?’ he asked, embarrassment colouring his cheeks under the fur as he stumbled over the words.

‘Is this the community garden?’ the old lady asked, squinting distrustfully at him through her purple-rimmed spectacles. They were a strange, half-moon shape – obviously a style choice rather than just whatever had been cheapest at the store.

‘Yes,’ Kurt said enthusiastically. ‘Yes, yes this is the community garden. We only just started. Would you like to help us plant some seedlings?’

‘It looked more like you were trying to plant _him_ ,’ the woman said, raising an eyebrow and glancing at Todd, who was muttering to himself on all fours. He lurched to his feet and scowled darkly at Kurt before shrugging at the woman. Mud was smeared across his face, all down the front of his brown leather jacket, the same jacket Kurt had seen him in two months ago.

‘He got a right to; I’m an ass.’

‘Yeah, you are,’ Kurt said firmly, but his smile didn’t waver. ‘Come on in, we’d love to have you.’

The woman gave them both another piercing glance before letting the child swing the gate open and skip in. She didn’t let go of her hand.

Kurt went over to them and started talking to the little girl immediately, asking her what she wanted to plant, telling her what each of the seedlings was and trying to put both her and the old woman at ease. He could feel Todd’s eyes burning a hole in his back but ignored him. He could smoke, he could plant marigolds, he could hop away. He didn’t care.

‘How old are you?’ he asked, and the girl’s dark eyes stared shyly out from her pink hood for almost twenty seconds before she shyly replied.

‘I’m seven.’

‘That is a very big age,’ Kurt said, nodding sagely. ‘You are getting old.’

She giggled. ‘Not as old as you. How old are you?’

‘I’m older than the moon,’ he said with a grin, and she laughed again. It was a fairytale he sometimes told kids when they asked why he was blue, why his eyes glowed. His mother had come up with it when he was a child – he was the part of the sky God cut out to make the moon so there would be light at night. His eyes were the stars that had been there before.

Once they’d decided on ‘pumpkin and mystery plants!’ the little girl, Amy, warmed to Kurt’s friendly openness and asked if she could stroke his fur. Under the watchful eye of her grandmother, Marta, Kurt rolled up his now-muddy sleeves again and let her run curious brown fingers along his forearms. Kids like this were a relief. They proved to him over and over again that humans were worth believing in, deserved better than to be given up on.

‘You’re like a cat,’ she said, delighted. Then her face turned serious. ‘Did you know cats can heal things by purring?’

‘No, I didn’t,’ Kurt said with a broad smile. ‘Why don’t you tell me about it while we plant these?’

He spent the next hour digging small holes with Marta and Amy, chatting animatedly with the girl as she determinedly placed every one of the mystery plants into the soil. After a while, Marta seemed to relax and left them to it, walking around and looking at everything, inspecting the raised beds and curving borders, the riotous splash of colour across the wall.

When Kurt and Amy returned to the crates, she was perched uncomfortably on one of the planters, watching Todd planting out the rest of the lettuces and spinach in neat rows with what looked like onion tops between. His face was a picture of impotent rage, smeared with mud, though his fingers were precise and gentle with the delicate roots. Kurt was surprised he was still there.

‘It needs a bench,’ Marta said. ‘Us oldies can’t keep goin’ like y’all can.’ Her accent was soft, a welcoming drawl that reminded Kurt so strongly of Rogue it hurt. She looked at Todd again and called across, ‘You made these, right?’ She tapped the side of the planter. ‘You could make a bench, couldn’t you? You’re resourceful.’

Todd rose to his feet and for a moment the thunderous expression on his face faded, replaced by a wide-eyed grimace of surprise. ‘Uh, yeah, sure lady. I can do that.’ He didn’t say anything more, but she saw the question in his face.

‘We live right there.’ She indicated a small house fifty yards down the street. ‘I saw you boys here last winter, fightin’ and makin’ nice with that cop an’ kickin’ pallets to bits. Saw you,’ she inclined her head at Todd, ‘makin’ these.’

Kurt glanced at the other man. Why would he say yes to making her a bench? Maybe he really _did_ want to get into this garden thing, for whatever reason. He shrugged it off irritably. The guy would get bored, he had the attention span of a fly. _You are what you eat_. The thought sent a small smirk flickering across his face.

‘What can we do now?’ Amy asked with bright, greedy eyes as she looked at the last of the seedlings – some sad peas and beans from the garden store’s clearance shelf.

‘We can go and get some lunch,’ Marta said firmly, pushing herself up to standing.

‘But _grandma_ ,’ Amy began.

‘No buts, bunny, we can come back after if you really want.’ Then her shrewd eyes glanced at Kurt and Todd again, assessing. ‘I bet y’all are hungry too, right?’

Kurt bit his lip – he didn’t want to be a burden – but nodded honestly.

‘Yeah,’ Todd replied, seemingly having no qualms about it.

Marta nodded, satisfied, and the wrinkles in her cheeks deepened in a smile. ‘Come on then Amy, you can help me carry the food. We’ll have a picnic.’

‘Oh, you really don’t have to-’ Kurt began, but she silenced him with a look.

‘You lied through your teeth to that cop, right?’

He nodded uncertainly, the idiom throwing him a little. He _had_ definitely lied, though.

She grinned, her face folding into a beautiful web of laughter lines. ‘Good. I hate cops. We’ll be back in half an hour. Save those,’ she pointed at the beans and peas, ‘for Amy to plant and we’ll call it quits.’

Then they were off, ambling up the street toward their house while Amy chattered like a brook, pointing out all of the little plants growing out of the cracks in the sidewalk.

There was an awkward quiet. Not silence, because Amy’s voice could still be heard, and there was a bird twittering somewhere and a car’s engine growled the next street over – all interesting things, all things that could be latched onto to pretend that this hardened space between the two of them was just air and not crystallised, sharp tension. You couldn’t cut it with a knife – a _chisel_ was more like it.

Kurt wordlessly picked up the last tray of spinach and went over to where Todd was smoking by the lettuce.

‘You gonna hit me again?’ Todd asked warily around his cigarette.

‘No,’ Kurt said coldly. ‘I think we’ve set enough of a bad example today.’

‘Hey, you jumped _me_ , dawg,’ Todd reminded him, dropping into a crouch on the other side of the border.

‘Do you really blame me?’ Kurt asked, resolutely not looking at him, at those black eyes. He focused instead on his hands, fingernails black with dirt, as they carefully separated out the spinach roots to plant out.

He heard the shuffling creak of leather as Todd shrugged. ‘Guess not.’

Kurt stopped what he was doing and looked up, frustrated. His brows drew together in a frown. ‘Why are you here, Todd?’

‘Told you. Helpin’ with the garden.’ But he didn’t look at him.

‘Don’t lie.’

 _Then_ those black eyes turned on him, lit up red and angry. Good. Kurt was tired of being the only one feeling here.

‘I ain’t lyin’, Kurt.’ And that felt like a low blow, like the sharp edge of a knife, his name in that bitter mouth again.

They glared at each other for a moment over the hapless spinach, that red light in Todd’s eyes glowing brighter for a moment. Kurt knew that look, awaited the punch – or slap, or fist tugging his hair – almost eagerly. Then the glow faded and those strong shoulders sagged. Todd looked away.

‘I _am_ sorry, yo. I didn’t…’ He sighed again, heavy with weariness. The mud only made him look older, highlighting the fine lines around his mouth and the corners of his eyes. ‘It’s been a long couple months, dawg.’

Despite himself, despite the seething anger simmering beneath his thin veneer of calm, Kurt was curious enough to ask. ‘What happened?’

Todd rocked back on his heels, hands automatically seeking out his pocket. Kurt reached over to still his arm.

‘Don’t.’

Todd shrugged him off irritably and pulled out his pack of cigarettes and lighter anyway. ‘Dawg, if I need a smoke, I need a fuckin’ smoke.’ He lit it and glanced at Kurt with a quick smirk that was gone as soon as it had appeared. ‘I promise you it won’t be this that kills me.’

Kurt rolled his eyes and sucked on his own teeth to keep from snapping at him out of frustration. Why did he even care? Let him smoke himself to death. It was none of Kurt’s business.

Todd exhaled, a long stream of smoke that curled in the air and floated toward the heavens like a freed soul.

‘Someone found me.’

Kurt’s eyes widened, stomach dropping. ‘You mean Eric?’

Todd shook his head and finally, finally, looked at Kurt directly. ‘Naw, dawg. Fer a while I thought it was. Didn’t wanna bring no trouble your way so I didn’t say nothin’. Didn’t wanna deal with that shit myself either so I fucked off. Skipped town. Figured if I was gonna hafta fight, we might as well do it somewhere without other folks’ to worry about.’ He took a drag on his cigarette. ‘Of course, it turned out it wasn’t one of Magneto’s fuckin’ lackeys after all. Some guy from SHIELD, tryin’ for extra credit.’ He smiled grimly. ‘He won’t be doin’ that again.

‘You killed him?’ Kurt asked, shocked.

‘What?’ Todd stared at him. ‘No! Christ, Fuzzy. I beat seven bells outta him and sent him packin’. Told him not to fuck with me again.’

‘How do you know he won’t?’

Todd shrugged. ‘I don’t. I just… I don’t like killin’ people fer no good reason of my own. S’why I wanted out. Here’s hopin’ I guess.’ He smoked silently for a moment. ‘I reckon he’ll keep quiet, though. Ain’t no reason to go blabbin’ about getting’ your ass handed to you by a fuckin’ Toad, right? Far as he said, he wasn’t actin’ on anybody’s orders so maybe that’s the end of it.’ He heaved another sigh. ‘Only got back a week ago. Kat’s dad was pissed as fuck ‘bout me skippin’ out on him. Nearly didn’t give me my job back.’

‘You don’t think he will just follow you back here and try again?’

‘Dawg, I didn’t fuck off for two months and blow my- fuck everythin’ up, just to bring trouble right back to your fuckin’ door.’ Todd scowls around his cigarette and Kurt realises he’s serious.

‘It would have been safer for you to move on. To find a new place,’ he said carefully, setting each word down like a playing card.

‘Yup,’ Todd agreed, not looking at him, popping the ‘p’ like Kurt remembered him trying to do as a teen, back when he’d started his annoying beatboxing habit.

He breathed slowly, keeping his eyes on Todd’s face. ‘Then why did you come back?’

Todd didn’t reply for a long minute, staring sightlessly out through the fence and across the street. ‘That’s a secret.’ He finally, finally glanced sidelong at Kurt with a small twist of that familiar smirk, and this time it didn’t piss Kurt off.

He smiled despite himself and turned his attention back to the spinach, feeling like someone had taken out some of the weight he’d been carrying in his chest recently and replaced it with helium. Maybe today wasn’t so bad after all.

‘I’m sorry for hitting you,’ he said at last.

Todd shrugged. ‘I’m an ass, remember?’

‘I bet you say that to all the boys.’ And oh, the stupid, cliché line was so, so worth it for the way Todd _stared_ at him like he’d grown a second head.

‘Alright, lunch break!’ called a familiar voice over the fence, and Kurt leapt up to help Marta carry in the cooler full of food she’d brought over while Amy spread two tatty blankets on the ground.

‘Ach, I’m sorry, I should have offered to come and help,’ he babbled as he lifted the heavy cooler out of the old woman’s arms.

She scowled at him and plopped down onto one of the blankets. ‘I am _perfectly_ capable, young man. Now sit down and stop flapping.’

‘Don’t think he can do that, lady. Dude’s a chronic flapper,’ Todd said with a smirk. Kurt squawked indignantly and Marta laughed uproariously, the full-bellied laugh of a woman who had grown out of worrying what others thought of her, grown to fill the space she took up without apologising for it.

The four of them ate together as the sun filtered between the patches of cloud, flickering warm and cold. Todd flirted outrageously with Marta, and she laughed and told dirty jokes right back. Amy was much more interested in building the perfect sandwich and asking Kurt about what it was like to have a tail, eventually squirrelling out the fact that he’d been in the circus for a few years and commanding him to do flips and tumbles and rolls like a little general.

Kurt had missed kids, missed being surrounded by eager young minds. That was one of the aches the Institute had left behind in his heart – he missed teaching the students, talking with people who saw the world fresh, as it could be seen. Amy helped. She helped a lot. He spent the rest of the afternoon planting out peas and beans with her next to the pumpkins after Marta poo-poo’d his idea of planting them separately.

‘Get them and some maize in there, you’ve got the three sisters,’ she said. ‘They all help each other grow. Beans put nitrogen into the soil, the maize takes it out, it’s a system.’

The four of them laughed a lot as they planted and neatly labelled the rows, and even though no one else showed up it felt like maybe the seeds of something germinating, like a bud beginning to open. Even if nothing more came of this patch of land than some abandoned lettuces and this one day, it had been worth it. For at least one day, they’d had a community, the four of them.

But too soon the sun began to set, still shy of the earth this early in the year, and Marta packed Amy off home with promises that she could come back the next weekend to check on the plants. Kurt followed them to their house to borrow Marta’s watering can and returned to liberally soak the newly planted seedlings before it got too dark and cold.

To his surprise, when he dropped the can back off at Marta’s house and went back to pick up his crates from the garden under a tattooed sky, Todd was still there, standing loosely in the amber pool of a streetlight, his sharp, broad face thrown into black shadow and disrupted only by the glowing cherry of his cigarette.

‘You waited,’ Kurt said, uncertain and tentative as he stepped forward into the pool of light. The fine fur on his cheekbones illuminated with sepia light.

Todd shrugged, the leather of his jacket shifting up and down once. ‘I ain’t headin’ home just yet,’ he said.

‘What are your plans?’ Kurt asked. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be a part of them, whatever they were. Even if Todd’s reasons for disappearing after their last encounter were valid ones, he didn’t like feeling this destabilised. Todd’s admission earlier, and apology, should not have lifted his heart like a helium balloon, not after two months. It was too much, emotions overreaching, becoming hyperbolic in the face of one decent interaction, one day and night of laughing until his cheeks hurt and feeling _seen_ for once. It wasn’t sensible to let someone else have so much say in his emotions.

‘Gotta go shopping,’ Todd said. It sounded so mundane that Kurt had to laugh. ‘What? What’s funny, dawg?’

‘Just,’ Kurt gasped for air between breathy giggles, ‘I don’t know vhat I expected. Not that.’

‘Well,’ Todd grumbled, slumping further into his jacket.

‘Well what?’

‘Well nothin’, dawg.’ He stubbed out his cigarette on the lamppost and stuck it in his back pocket, that strange habit Kurt had noticed the last time they hung out.

‘Vhy do you do that?’ he asked, catching the way his accent was slipping, as it always did when he was with Todd.

‘Do what?’

Kurt looked meaningfully at his hand leaving his back pocket.

‘Oh. This chick, festival hippie chick, she near hollered my ear off fer dumpin’ ‘em on the ground. I was kinda high at the time so it sunk in, I guess. Started hearin’ her voice anytime I tossed one, so I now just put ‘em in the trash when I see one.’ He cleared his throat, the markings on his face standing out a little more starkly, and Kurt realised he was blushing. It looked oddly charming on him, the way it made the patches stand out dark against his skin. He looked up, and a familiar spark of defiance lit up those dark eyes. ‘So, I ain’t goin’ shoppin’ exactly. I’m gonna go dumpster divin’.’

Kurt heard it there in his voice, the unspoken invitation, the one that really he shouldn’t accept because while he might have gotten over his aversion to diving by then, did it himself on occasion, he should have been listening to the way Todd’s eyes on him lit up his nerves like fire flooding through every synapse. He should have been paying attention to that, and saying no.

His mouth didn’t care.

‘Would you like company?’ Kurt didn’t smile. He felt every muscle of his face, every nerve. He wanted to add more, an excuse like ‘I’m running low’ or ‘I don’t have anything better to do’, but he didn’t. He just watched.

Todd’s eyes did that strange thing Kurt had noticed the last time they were together, that motion where they opened just a little wider before narrowing – that surprised recalculating – and a green tongue ran over his lips, looking nervous rather than flirty. He nodded stiffly. ‘Sure.’

But Kurt caught the way those black eyes caught on the low scoop of his neckline, _dragged_ slowly across his clavicle, and he felt a familiar shiver ripple through him at the heat in that fleeting gaze. This evening was going to take a lot of self-restraint. But Kurt was a Catholic - self-restraint was part of his factory settings. He could handle it. Definitely.


	7. Stealing Isn't Against The Law (As Long As You Don't Get Caught)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Todd and Kurt spend a romantic evening jumping in dumpsters and playing with a truly unholy amount of whipped cream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look at us goooo. Chapter 7 of ??? 
> 
> I said 9, right? Turns out I lied! There are at least 4 more to come! I hope you're enjoying this ride as much as I am!

‘Dude. What the fuck?’ Todd’s voice echoed hollowly against the sides of the dumpster he was currently hanging over the side of, only his legs visible as he tipped his weight forward on webbed hands.

‘What is it?’ Kurt hissed, glancing over his shoulder. This was one of the only places that had actual, real security guards. Not that they could do much probably, but that didn’t stop the quiet hammer-pulse of adrenaline.

He ‘ported onto the lip of the dumpster and stared down into it.

‘What the fuck?’ he echoed.

It was full of cans of whipped cream, lying like little tin soldiers cast aside in rows and bundles.

Todd’s throaty cackle resonated out of the bin. ‘This is a cursed fuckin’ night, yo. Five empties and then _this_? What, does God want you to die of diabetes? Is that it?’ Nonetheless, he flipped himself onto his feet in the mess and started gathering cans.

‘What are we even going to _do_ vith all of this?’

Todd shrugged and laughed again. ‘I got no fuckin’ idea, yo, but this shit’s too funny to pass up.’

Kurt thought about it for a second. Todd was right, how many times in either of their lives were they going to have unlimited access to a hundred cans of whipped cream? He ‘ported back to the ground to snatch up the empty crate they’d hauled across and returned to the lip of the dumpster. Todd gathered armfuls of cans and stacked them into the crate until it was jammed full. Thirty six. Kurt counted.

‘Do you want _all_ of them?’ he asked uncertainly, eyeing the piles of them left in the dumpster.

Todd snorted. ‘No. Jesus, we got what, forty already? How the fuck you plannin’ on eating forty cans of whipped cream?’

‘I am not the one piling them into the crate,’ Kurt pointed out. ‘What’s that under your left foot?’

Todd lifted it and grinned. ‘Aw hell yeah, I love this shit.’ Two cardboard trays of apple sauce pots were dumped unceremoniously atop the cream. ‘Rich people, man, holy shit.’ He shook his head. ‘Weird thinkin’ every store used to be like this, huh? I remember-’

‘Yes, you are terribly old,’ Kurt interrupted, adjusting his grip on the crate. ‘I see a flashlight; ve should go.’

‘Anytime you’re ready, dawg,’ Todd said, reaching up and wrapping his long fingers around the end of Kurt’s tail. The contact sent a jolt through him, like electricity running up his spine. The flashlight rounded the corner and they disappeared in a cloud of black smoke.

-

‘Dawg, that was the easiest fuckin’ night I’ve had in months,’ Todd laughed as he dropped one of Kurt’s crates in the bed of his truck with a resounding clatter. It was piled high with packets of out of date rice – all sorts, from pudding rice to Arborio to the brown long-grained stuff the old hippie stores always sold – and five crushed boxes of butter, topped by a few sad packets of wilting spinach.

Kurt grinned over the top of a box of out of date bread and cake and dropped it unceremoniously beside the second crate, neatly stacked with a truly mind boggling quantity of whipped cream cans and darkening apple sauce pots. Kurt glanced at it and laughed. What the hell were they going to do with all that? They’d find something. Or Todd would – he’d probably fill up someone’s car with it or something equally gross. Either way, if the Lord had thoughtfully provided them with thirty six cans of whipped cream, then who was Kurt to complain? Worse case he’d just chug it whenever he was bored.

‘Glad to be of service.’ And he was. It had been fun, bamfing around town with Todd, following his directions like he didn’t know the place at all, ‘porting them past fences and locked gates, even disappearing from right in front of an irate security guard at one point. They’d hit a handful of duds at first, just spoiled meat and rotting vegetables, but when they’d stumbled over the stash of cream their luck had turned and now… Well, there was definitely enough rice to see them both through the next fortnight without even leaving home.

Kurt immediately extinguished the thoughts of what they could do with a fortnight locked inside together with thirty six cans of whipped cream. That was _not_ why he was here. They were past that.

‘You want me to drive you home or…?’ Todd trailed off, lighter flaring in the darkness on the other side of the truck bed. The end of the cigarette lit up twin sparks in those black eyes. A shiver ran over Kurt’s skin and he realised that he was actually cold. The thin fabric of his too-tight shirt had been fine during the day, and when they were jumping in and out of dumpsters, but now he was distinctly feeling the chill in the air.

‘Or what?’ He tilted his chin.

Todd looked away for a moment, breathed smoke. Then he looked back, inhaling from the cigarette like he was about to jump into water. ‘Or you can help me unload some of this at mine and I can make you dinner.’

Kurt’s stomach chose that as its cue and rumbled loudly enough that apparently even Todd could hear it on the other side of the truck. Those wide lips curved up in a grin.

‘Take that as a yes then?’ He laughed and shook his head, webbed fingers snatching the cigarette out of his mouth as he blew smoke into the night. He finished it in silence, stubbed the butt out on the rim of the truck and tucked it into his back pocket. It made Kurt smile for some reason.

Todd yanked open the driverside door. ‘C’mon, gotta hit up an actual store first.’

Kurt ‘ported directly into the passenger seat, leaning back against the door and stretching his legs out over the dirty, worn red leather as Todd started the engine. They reversed sharply as Todd swung the truck around, and Kurt had to grab at the handle above his head to avoid sliding into the footwell.

‘You did that on purpose,’ he accused. Todd stuck two inches of his tongue out at him in reply.

They drove under flickering amber streetlights in silence except for the roar of the engine. Kurt watched Todd’s face as stripes of shadow and light darted across it, briefly illuminating his black eyes before casting him into darkness again. This time, Todd didn’t say anything.

Eventually they pulled up outside one of the only remaining superstores nearby and Todd killed the engine. The silence afterwards felt languid, fuzzy in the way that the quiet after a car journey late at night always felt. Kurt could hear his heartbeat, quiet and steady in his ears. Todd didn’t look at him, folding the keys into his pocket and opening the door to hop out.

Kurt leaned over to lock the door before ‘porting out to walk beside him toward the store. It was big, daunting. The lights were all on inside – they obviously had solar on the roof or a monopolised field of wind turbines somewhere outside the city – and the cold white light felt like stepping through a veil into another world. Kurt fought off the ridiculous impulse to reach for Todd’s hand.

Inside it was so bright Kurt had to blink spots out of his vision. The whole place was white, sterile. It looked like nothing had changed in the last ten years, like the continent was still ticking by just the same as it had before the droughts and floods and ice storms had hit the States too and finally driven it home that the world was not _starting_ to change, it already _had_ , and they were going to have to deal with the fallout too. No amount of imperialist, fascist bullshit could change Nature’s mind.

But as always, it was the rich who were the last affected. And looking around, even with all of the empty shelves, the handful of darkened, cordoned-off aisles, it looked like they were still doing a lot better than everyone else. The prices had gone up and up as availability waned and price gouging became more and more common, and so places like this over-bright, half-stocked, regimented box were now the domain of the few, at least in the everyday.

Todd was already walking away from him. ‘Meet you outside in five,’ he said over his shoulder, and so Kurt wandered aimlessly, looking at the shelves like exhibits in a museum. He had no job, no money beyond what he’d saved up while working at the Institute. It wasn’t much, but it was enough if he was careful. Buying food there would not have been being careful. But he could look.

He inevitably found his way to the candy aisle, eyes sweeping across the brightly coloured packaging of old favourites, still somehow being produced somewhere in the world, still somehow shipped there to those shelves. He would have liked to buy some for the nostalgia, and for the sugar, of course. But candy was a premium item now.

He sighed. It had probably been five minutes by now. And if not, he could wait outside. He’d never felt comfortable in these kinds of stores, too exposed under harsh lights. He felt like an ink spill that someone would come along to wipe away eventually.

As he walked out, the security guard eyed him suspiciously, narrowed eyes raking over his fur as sharply as nails. It was the wrong kind of looking, the kind that said ‘give me a reason’, the hungry kind. Kurt was thankful he was wearing tight clothes without obvious pockets. It would be hard to come up with a reason to stop him beyond ‘don’t like the colour of your fur’. All of the muscles in his back tensed. This world asked a lot.

But then Todd was there, falling into step beside him, holding nothing but a packet of cigarettes. He tucked it into one of his jacket pockets without even pulling one out to smoke. He didn’t look at Kurt. ‘Ready to go, dawg?’

‘Sure. Was that all you needed?’

Todd did look at him then, a mischievous grin spreading across his face. ‘Not at all, yo.’

When they reached the truck, Kurt ‘ported inside and popped the locks, returning to his place leaning against the passenger window, legs up on the seat between himself and Toad. Todd swung himself in and slammed the door behind him, sagging back into the seat momentarily. He sighed. His black eyes glanced sideways, caught Kurt’s gaze on him, and this time he didn’t look away.

Kurt felt hot under his fur, because _this_ kind of looking was hungry too, but it wasn’t asking for a reason, an excuse. It didn’t look for how to harm or bully or punish. Todd’s gaze was raw, wanting in a way that made Kurt’s heart beat faster. He felt naked.

The silence breathed between them, tense and heavy with the weight of that gaze. Then Todd looked away and pulled a bottle of wine out from a pocket on his jacket that Kurt really hadn’t believed would have held something that size.

‘Did you steal that?’ he asked incredulously.

Todd barked out a dry laugh. ‘Naw dawg, it got in there by accident.’ He withdrew a plastic pouch of some kind of liquid and tossed it onto the seat between Kurt’s feet along with the wine. Then something was flying at Kurt’s face. He reached up, caught it instinctively, and turned it to see what it was. It was a packet of sour candy.

‘Caught you makin’ puppy eyes at that in the store,’ Todd muttered, producing the keys and starting the engine. ‘Figured you weren’t gonna take it so I swiped one.’

‘You stole this for me?’ Kurt asked, confused. His feelings about stealing had definitely grown somewhat more nuanced over the years, but it was still something he didn’t like to do himself. Perhaps it was the side of him that always feared getting caught that held him up. The fear of God’s eyes. Or CCTV. He didn’t judge others for it anymore, but he wasn’t so sure of it for himself. Dumpsters were different, though – that was _salvage._

‘Sure as shit din’t take it for me,’ Todd called back over the truck noise as he took them back onto the road. ‘I ain’t into sweet shit, yo.’ For a moment, he looked like he was going to continue, but then that wide mouth resolutely pressed shut in a thin line. Kurt considered flirting, but didn’t. Self-restraint was harder than it looked.

They drove on in silence as the streetlamps around them slowly flickered out, one by one, until they were driving in darkness through the sleeping heart of the city.

-

At last, down a dark street Kurt thought he maybe recognised, Todd pulled over and parked. The headlights switching off plunged the world into darkness, the quiet ‘ting’ of a cooling engine the only punctuation to the long word of silence. Kurt’s body felt warm and pleasantly heavy. He always felt sleepy in cars when he wasn’t the one driving.

After a long few minutes of quiet, Todd turned and opened the door to hop out, slipping the wine bottle and mysterious pouch back into his pocket. Kurt locked it from inside and ‘ported out to stand on the sidewalk. He looked around vaguely with a yawn. Oh.

‘We’re… at the garden?’ he said, frowning at Todd where he stood leaning against the truck and lighting a cigarette, partially illuminated by the silvery moon. The end caught; Todd inhaled, nodded.

‘Said I lived nearby, yo.’

‘How near?’ Kurt eyed him suspiciously.

Todd grinned, a flash of teeth in the dark, and his silhouette inclined its head toward the house directly across the road from the little patch of land Kurt had claimed as the garden.

‘Vas?’ Kurt said, floored. ‘You live right _here_?’

Todd laughed, that dry dusty cackle that made the fur on Kurt’s neck ruffle up pleasantly. ‘Yeah, dawg. Thought I lost the place when I had to split.’

An uncomfortable reminder of what Todd had been through over the intervening time since they last saw each other. Kurt had made a lot of assumptions in that time.

But Todd was already continuing, so there was no chance to dwell – or apologise.

‘But turns out the cops _really_ don’t give a shit around here.’ He paused and stared at the air for a moment. ‘That or crazy lady put ‘em off…’ He shrugged. ‘Anyhow, no one’s come to bother me about it. An’ no one changed the locks while I was gone, so…’

It took Kurt a moment to catch on to what Todd wasn’t saying.

‘You’re…’ he struggled with the word in his mouth, too many hard K-sounds and Ws. ‘Sk-vatting?’

A bark of laughter. Dimly glowing red eyes in the dark. ‘Yeah, dawg, I’m squattin’, yo. How the fuck d’you think I’d afford a whole house otherwise?’ He shook his head, and Kurt caught the flash of light off teeth bared in an amused grin. ‘C’mon, dawg, let’s get this shit inside.’

Todd tucked the stub of his cigarette into his pocket and leaned over the side of the truck to haul out the crate full of rice. It occurred to Kurt for the first time that Todd was considerably shorter than him, his eyes on a level with Kurt’s chin. He just didn’t seem it because of that loud voice and big gestures and vast anger. Huh.

Well, he thought as he picked up the sagging cardboard box full of baked goods and set it atop the crate of cream and apple sauce, there hadn’t exactly been a lot of standing up in their last encounter. The fur on his back lifted briefly, a quiet thrill shivering across his skin at the memory. He wondered if he could feasibly pick Todd up, force those strong legs to wrap around him, hold him up against a wall and…

Self-restraint. _Self-restraint._

Todd lugged his (heavier) crate across the street and up to the peeling front door, propping it against the wall with his hip while he ferreted his keys out from his pocket again. The door opened with a quiet ‘click’ and Todd went inside, disappearing into the dark hallway like he’d been swallowed by it.

Kurt followed quickly, his tail pushing forward to catch the wooden door as it swung back behind Todd’s disappearing frame. The floor creaked quietly under his feet as his tail gently shut the door behind him. A light flicked on at the end of the narrow hallway, and Kurt followed it, walking carefully – bare feet in strangers’ homes was always a risk, and he _remembered_ what the Boarding House had been like.

'You have keys?' he called ahead, clutching the crate tightly to prevent the cardboard box from sliding off the top.

'Changed the locks, yo.'

'You can _do_ that?' Kurt asked vaguely, more occupied with the fact that the bread was threatening to cascade out of his arms in a baked avalanche.

It struck him that last time he’d been wary about being led into a trap. Today it hadn’t even crossed his mind. He was getting complacent, trusting. Was that a bad thing?

He followed Todd through into the kitchen. It was cleaner than he’d expected, but still half of the counter space was taken up with assorted clutter, ranging from old mail to a sooty poker to a ceramic frog that had been cracked neatly in half. The windowsill was lined with plant pots full of herbs, some thriving and some barely still alive. The part of the kitchen not taken up with cupboards and old appliances was bare except for a sturdy-looking table made out of old studwork timber and a slab of plywood, surrounded by three patched, mismatched chairs. It would win no awards, but it was functional.

‘Just chuck it on the floor for now,’ Todd said, unceremoniously dumping his crate across the sink and covering the lone plate languishing in it. He turned and opened a tall cupboard and started ferrying packets of rice across to it. ‘How much of this d’you want?’ he asked over his shoulder. ‘Half’n’half or…?’

‘Oh.’ Kurt straightened from where he’d carefully put down the crate and wobbly cardboard box. ‘Um. I suppose so.’ He didn’t usually eat much rice, but free food was not something to be sniffed at. Especially not enough to see him through a fortnight.

‘Ok.’ Todd returned, picking up another armful of paper packages. ‘You wanna bamf home with it or you want me to drop it off in the truck?’

Was that a dismissal? Kurt eyed Todd cautiously, suddenly unsure of himself. Which way was the tide turning? How had it felt so easy before? Suddenly, Todd’s rhythms felt thoroughly mystifying, syncopated and strange where before it had felt like a dance. One they both understood.

‘Nein,’ he said quietly. ‘I can ‘port it.’

‘Good,’ Todd said, turning away from the cupboard, and this time his wide mouth was stretched wider in a grin. ‘Didn’t fancy drivin’ you back after half a bottle.’ He withdrew the bottle of white wine he’d lifted from the store, along with the packet of fluid. He caught Kurt glancing curiously at it. ‘Chicken stock. Ain’t had meat in a while so din’t have any lyin’ around.’

‘What are you using it for?’ Kurt asked curiously. The sudden reappearance of Todd’s smile, and the loosening of tension, had taken him by surprise. He leaned back against the counter, the poker nudging against his spine.

Todd’s grin grew broader. ‘I’m makin’ you dinner, remember? Fair’s fair.’

Kurt bit back an automatic surge of distrust – he’d been cooked for too many times by Kitty to be optimistic about others’ cooking unless he was paying for it. And while he might think Todd Tolensky had grown up hot, he didn’t have much faith that the guy would have ever progressed far beyond his old ‘if it’s in range, it’s edible’ attitude. Oh well. It might be interesting. He smiled.

‘Ok. Thank you.’ He looked around with interest, taking in the yellowed, smoke-stained walls, the peeling old wallpaper, the scorchmarks on the wall behind the stove where something had caught fire once. This house had obviously been lived in for a long time by someone once upon a time. All of the cupboard doors were painted an off-white that had gone grey with the airborne grease from cooking on gas over the years. Three of them had new hinges – probably Todd’s work. How long had he been here, in this dingy abandoned house by himself? What had it been like when he first found it?

‘What can I do?’ he asked suddenly. Idle hands led to wandering thoughts, and admiring Todd’s ass as he bent over to lift the cardboard box of bread off the second crate was not a sensible course of action.

It _did_ look nice in those jeans though, even if they were muddy. Kurt’s cheeks felt hot enough to _burn_. Thankfully, Todd said nothing – maybe he didn’t even notice Kurt’s eyes on him this time.

‘Eh, maybe count out however many of these you don’t want and put them in the fridge over there?’ he said, straightening and scratching the back of his head. Kurt’s gut fluttered at the memory of his own hands tangled in that long, brown hair. Then clenched as two months of trying to forget caught up with him.

‘Um, right, okay.’ He came away from the counter and busied himself ferrying cans to the fridge. The floor was grainy but clear underfoot, the bare boards creaking mournfully as he strode over them. There was no colour in this room, no personality. It was just a den for a creature to hide in. Depressing, like his apartment.

Todd, meanwhile, had shifted the crate off the sink and onto the floor beside its twin, rinsed off the plate sat over the plughole and slotted it into the hanging rack above the drying board, and was dragging knives, a deep frying pan, a saucepan and a ladle out of various drawers and cupboards.

As Kurt patiently stacked the cans of whipped cream in the fridge, the scent of chopped onions began to fill the air. His stomach rumbled. They hadn’t eaten since Marta and Amy shared their picnic with them. Almost ten hours. No wonder he was hungry. He returned to the counter and dug out the two trays of apple sauce pots to put away, pausing to stack the crates together and kick them out from under Todd’s feet.

‘Where do you want the bread?’

‘In the cupboard by the window,’ Todd replied. ‘S’colder than the others.’

The sounds of chopping ended and Kurt heard the little ‘whoosh’ of a gas jet igniting. Butter sizzled.

‘What are you cooking?’ he asked as he played Tetris with the loaves of bread and cake, packing them tightly into the cupboard.

‘Somethin’ Freddy used to make,’ Todd replied, in a voice that was a little too measured to be really casual. Kurt glanced over his shoulder but saw nothing but those shoulders hunched over the stovetop, swathed in that protective leather jacket.

At last, everything that Kurt wasn’t taking home was stashed somewhere safe. He flattened the cardboard box and, for want of anywhere to put it, rolled it into a tube. His hands felt suddenly empty of anything to do, and standing here under the harsh glow of a bare lightbulb in a kitchen squatted by his teenage rival - whom he’d fucked two months ago and who had then disappeared without a word – Kurt suddenly felt very out of place.

‘Where should I put this?’ he asked awkwardly, holding the cardboard roll out.

Todd barely glanced at it. ‘Just chuck it out the back door. I gotta pile in the yard to burn at some point. Useful when I run outta gas.’

‘It’s bottled?’

‘Yeah, dawg. Wasn’t hooked up at all when I got here. Whole house has been cut off from everythin’ for years by the look of it.’

Kurt briefly opened the back door to throw the cardboard out, revealing a bare, concrete slab of a yard with a tiny planter along one wall and about twenty pots of varying sizes, all full of soil and all obviously growing something whether it was a shoot or a small shrub. The pile of cardboard was small, the one of wood next to it even smaller.

‘You like gardening then?’ he said, closing the door again. A sting of embarrassment. Stupid question.

Todd snorted and poured a whole packet of uncooked rice into the pan alongside the garlic and onions he’d already simmered off. ‘What do _you_ think?’

Silence fell again, awkward and tense, and Kurt busied himself picking up any obvious litter from the counter, tidying paper into piles. Five minutes passed. Maybe he ought to make excuses. Go home.

But then Todd was shrugging out of his oversized jacket and stepping away from the stove to hang it up, and Kurt could see the strong lines of his arms, the movement of the muscle in his back through his thin t-shirt, and his mouth went dry. Going home now would just be rude, really. Todd _was_ cooking him dinner, after all.

Kurt began to wonder how good his self-restraint actually was. Glowing eyes rested on the movements of Todd’s hips as he stirred the rice in the pan, ladled steaming stock over it, turned away to grab two chipped mugs out of the cupboard to his right. His fingers twitched, imagining stepping closer, draping himself over that slim, sturdy frame and curling his hands around Todd’s hips, the curve of his arms, the stringy toughness in his shoulders. Pressing a kiss to the side of his neck, where sharp teeth had left purple bruises two months before.

He shook his head. That was not happening. That was not what this was. This was… something fragile and strange, something that had fallen into the gap between passion and awkward coldness. Something he couldn’t quite catch, like a whisper on the breeze.

‘Here.’ A mug slid across the counter to him and he caught it reflexively. ‘Don’t got no glasses, yo. Figured you’d rather that than sharin’ the bottle.’

Kurt smiled wanly. It was for the best. ‘What are we drinking to?’

‘Hell, I dunno,’ Todd said, stirring more stock into the rice. ‘Still not killin’ each other?’ A webbed hand caught up the mug beside him and tilted it, a smile lifting one corner of his mouth. ‘Yeah. To still not killin’ each other.’

They both took a drink. It was surprisingly good. Of course – if you’re going to steal, might as well make sure it’s something nice.

‘Not that you didn’t try this afternoon,’ Todd said, all deliberately-loose limbs and black eyes eyeing Kurt over the rim of his mug. He set it down but didn’t look away, leaning his elbows back on the counter behind him.

Kurt looked away awkwardly and put his mug down too, leaving his hand loosely curled around it. ‘I’m sorry, Todd,’ he said. ‘It vasn’t fair of me to…’ to make assumptions. To get angry even if those assumptions had been right. To start a fight.

Todd laughed. ‘Dawg, I ain’t lookin’ for sorry.’ He hesitated, and that look flickered across his face, and Kurt’s insides went into freefall again. ‘I ain’t… lookin’ for anything, really.’ He suddenly looked tired, face sagging with exhaustion. The mud still smudged across his cheeks and nose made him look even more haggard, sunken with weariness.

‘I _am_ sorry, though,’ Kurt said, picking up his wine again. ‘I should not have jumped you.’

‘No, but it made _me_ feel better.’ Todd laughed. ‘So I’m guessin’ it did for you too.’

Kurt didn’t want to admit it, but he was right. He nodded sheepishly. ‘Yeah. I think I kind of wanted you to hit me too, when Marta and Amy went to get food. For the same reason.’

Todd nodded. ‘Yeah.’

The silence didn’t feel so sharp after that. Kurt wriggled himself up to half-sit on the counter, his bare feet dangling over the dirty floor. Todd stirred the concoction in the pan, ladling more liquid into it. And Kurt watched him.

Todd’s hands were quick and precise as he chopped up some of the wilting spinach they’d found and tossed it into the pan with seemingly careless pinches of the herbs on the sill. A small, crooked smile lit up on his face. ‘You’re doin’ it again, Fuzz.’

Kurt smiled and let his eyes drop to where Todd’s sneakers, now bound in duct tape, stood on the floor. ‘So I vas.’

A quiet huff, like a laugh. ‘Like what you see?’

‘Yes,’ Kurt replied truthfully, lifting his gaze back up to look directly at Todd’s face. The other man turned his head and caught his eyes, dark eyes soft but unreadable. There was no malice there, no defensiveness for once. Kurt offered him a small, sad smile. ‘But I don’t know how to feel about that.’

Todd nodded and looked back at the pan. ‘You, er… wanna talk about it?’ He took another gulp of wine and pulled a face. ‘Man, I hate wine.’

Kurt couldn’t help the surprised laugh that bubbled out of him. ‘Zen vhy did you steal it?’

Those strong shoulders shrugged. ‘Needed it for the recipe, dawg. An’ my pockets weren’t big enough for a six pack on top.’

‘Vhat _are_ you cooking?’ Kurt asked, peering curiously at the frying pan, now full to the brim with soupy rice. It smelled… really good, actually. It occurred to him that maybe Todd was trying to impress him.

‘Risotto, dawg.’ Todd shrugged uncomfortably. ‘Freddie used to love it, man, he loved anything that took fuckin’ hours to make. Stuff you couldn’t leave alone. Chilled him out. He showed me how to make this when we were like, twenty two or somethin’.’ He fell silent for a moment. ‘He was real good at cookin’, y’know.’

Kurt knew that note, that discordant harmony in Todd’s voice. It resonated through him and struck a similar chord. Some losses were too big to comprehend. He didn’t expect Todd to continue, but he forged on after another moment of quiet.

‘He ain’t… I dunno, man. He cut out before I did, before the whole… He was smarter’n’me. I don’t know if he’s…’ he trailed off. He took another swig of wine and rallied, the tension visible in the cut of his shoulders, in the way he held his arms. ‘I like to think he’s out in some cornfields somewhere, with his girl and a kid or three. They disappeared right around the same time so it ain’t- it ain’t impossible.’

Kurt nodded. ‘If he… If they left before we did, then it _is_ possible.’ There were more loopholes to slip through then. No one was looking as hard. ‘And if you are here, and you’re alive and safe, and somehow-’ he paused, rubbing the back of his neck with a laugh. ‘And somehow ve found each other, zen… you know, anything is possible.’

Todd nodded, but he didn’t reply. Kurt didn’t offer any more reassurance. It would have been hollow, and they would both have known it. He didn’t think he could have borne that.

‘Thank you for cooking for me,’ he said instead. _Thank you for sharing some of you with me._

‘S’fine, dawg. Guess it gives me an excuse. Normally I just eat basic shit, I ain’t much of a cook.’

‘Vell I can’t make risotto, so colour me very impressed,’ Kurt laughed. He took another drink from his mug, idly turning it in his hands to read the ‘I Like It Hot And Steamy’ emblazoned on the side of it. He laughed again. It wasn’t the same, deep, full-bellied laugh Todd had hooked out of him the last time they’d met, but it was still more in a day than he’d had in the last month, and Kurt was greedy for it. He _liked_ how much Todd made him laugh, liked that he could do the same too, sometimes. That was why he needed the self-restraint. If they burned through this like at least fifty percent of him wanted to, they’d eat it all up, leave ash and char and each other to lick their wounds alone. He wanted more than that, even if it had to be different from the way he wanted it.

‘Todd?’

The other man looked at him. The mud on his face sent a ripple of guilt through Kurt, but it was more funny than upsetting. They really did make a ridiculous pair.

‘I think I _would_ like to talk about it.’

Kurt saw Todd’s chest rise in a slow, deep breath before the other man nodded. ‘Ok.’

‘How long until that’s ready?’ Kurt asked, nodding at the pan. He was stalling.

‘Oh, uh,’ Todd looked surprised. ‘I guess fifteen minutes, dawg.’

‘Ok.’ There was time. Damn. ‘Ok, um…’ He shifted, settled back into the counter. Took a sip of wine. ‘Zis is actually nice, you know. The vine. It’s good.’

Todd shrugged. ‘Coulda fooled me, just tastes like shit grape juice to me, dawg.’

Kurt laughed. Again. God, what was he doing? What were _they_ doing? He sighed and turned his mug in his fingers. ‘It’s, uh… I’m not very good at talking about… uh.’ _Feelings_.

‘No shit,’ Todd said, but there was laughter in it. There was the quiet curl of a smile around those broad lips.

‘You aren’t any better!’ Kurt accused.

And then Todd _did_ laugh, head thrown back and mouth wide, that dusty cackle filling the air, cutting through the static in Kurt’s mind. He laughed too.

‘Ok, ok, ve’re both bad at the whole “feelings” thing,’ he said, wiping his eyes. He bit back the urge to say _at least we know we aren’t alone_. That was dangerous territory, stepping right out amongst the landmines. That was not how this could be. There was too much history, too many old wounds and complexes tied up in two bunches of raw nerves and neuroses. Romance was never going to be easy between them, not as they were.

‘What was yer first clue, dawg?’ Todd drawled. ‘Was it me takin’ over a decade and three beers to tell you I had a crush on you when we were kids or did somethin’ else get there first?’

‘You want me to pick just one thing?’

‘Ay, fuck you Fuzzy.’

‘You kind of already did.’

And _that_ shot an arrow through the conversation. Todd’s face flushed, his patches standing out starkly against the pale pink between them, and he silently poured more stock onto the rice. The tension was back again, sharp as crystal. But they needed to be able to talk about this.

As Kurt tried to work out what to say, he realised Todd’s shoulders were shaking. He leaned forward, concerned. But then Todd turned to look straight at him, and it was obvious that he was biting his lip to hold back laughter, not tears. He did not succeed.

A quiet, hissing giggle erupted out of the other man and he shook his head, a webbed hand coming up absently to push brown hair out of his face.

‘Come on then, dawg, let’s talk.’

‘Ok…’ Kurt put down his mug to stop himself fiddling with it, and folded his hands in his lap, swinging his heels back against the cupboard doors idly. ‘I…’ What did he _want_ to say? ‘I vas… really happy vhen we met up again. I liked… I _like_ how much you make me laugh. I felt… very happy you stayed that night.’ He hadn’t thought he’d be brave enough to say that, to unveil that tender place that still felt bruised by two months of silence. ‘I really enjoyed… talking vith you. Eating, catching up. I…’ Heat rushed to his face and he could have _sworn_ Todd could see it even through the fur. But if he was going to be brave, he was going to go all out. Todd had never backed down from him, so he wouldn’t either. They’d gone toe to toe enough times to know that neither of them was afraid of the other, and damn if that wasn’t a relief, a quiet truth nestled deep down inside this whole mess. They weren’t scared of each other. Todd didn’t shy away from his body, from the fur or the fangs or the tail, and he didn’t twist it, worship it into a fetish either. He just took him as he was. And Kurt thought he felt the same. He wasn’t put off by the tongue, or the webbed fingers or the dappled shade of Todd’s skin, and he also didn’t want him for just those things. They were both too much the ‘freak’ to be hunting it down themselves. It was just… a relief. To be understood.

‘I really enjoyed what we did.’ Ok, so maybe he couldn’t bring himself to say it quite as bluntly as he maybe should. Maybe there was still some of that shy, guilty Catholic boy in there, hiding in his blush and stammering words. But shyness didn’t mean he couldn’t speak at all. He took in a sharp breath. ‘But I don’t think ve should do it again.’

Todd’s face was unreadable as he watched Kurt stumble through his words, black eyes still and impossible to see through.

‘At least,’ Kurt scrambled for the right words. ‘Not right now. I don’t… I vas very angry vith you for a while, and I don’t…’ He closed his eyes, shut out the world for a moment. Anchored himself with his breathing. ‘I _feel_ a lot vhen I am vith you. I feel angry, and I feel happy and confused and… it’s a lot. I like it. I like it a lot. But it hurts too, and I’m not…’ his voice shrank in his own ears, became small and murmuring. ‘I need to feel stable for a vhile.’ There had been so much instability, so much uncertainty, over the last few years. It finally felt like he had found some kind of balance, even though there was nothing to hold onto, and Todd felt like something he could so easily trick himself into leaping for, something that would kick the three-legged stool out from under his feet.

‘You an’ me both, dawg.’ Todd’s voice surprised him, cutting through the tense air like a knife, and wasn’t that a relief, that it had shrunk down to the point where a chisel was no longer needed, where a knife would do? His body sagged back against the wall. He opened his eyes.

Todd had his mug in his hand, hip leaning up against the counter by the stove, hair swept back out of his face, and he looked as tired as Kurt suddenly felt. ‘Look, I – aw, shit.’ He turned and emptied the saucepan of stock into the rice, stirred it in slowly. ‘It’s been a hell of a couple months, man.’ He paused to drink from his mug and scatter some kind of cheese onto the pan, and when he spoke again it was like pulling teeth. ‘I was happy too, yo. Seein’ you show up out the fuckin’ blue right across from my goddamn house, diggin’ at that fuckin’ shithole like it had called your mama a whore. Fightin’ with you. Doin’ stupid shit. Eatin’, sittin’ on the roof.’ He glanced quickly at Kurt and again Kurt felt that raw sweep of Todd’s gaze across his exposed collarbone, but this time it was cut-off, stunted. Todd looked away and clattered two plates onto the counter.

‘Dawg, I felt on top of the fuckin’ moon that day, ok? An’ that was… that was great an’ all, but I got stupid. I spent the next couple days just thinkin’ about… just wrapped up in my own damn head, so I wasn’t payin’ enough attention and that idiot from SHIELD almost jumped me.’ He ladled the goopy mess in the pan out onto the two plates. ‘I high-tailed it outta town but it was a close call. I wasn’t…’ He sneered at himself. ‘I wasn’t payin’ enough attention. An’ I don’t know when the next one’s comin’. So...’ He cleared his throat again. ‘Yeah. It’s not a good idea right now.’

Kurt hadn’t realised it would _hurt_ , having his sentiments echoed back at him, hadn’t expected the clenching in his chest, the tension in his belly as Todd neatly pushed what they’d had away in the same way he just had.

He smiled weakly, uncertainly. It hurt, but… maybe it was a relief. The smile wavered, but he meant it. ‘Friends, then?’

Todd snorted and dropped the empty pan into the sink. ‘Yeah, dawg. Friends sounds good.’ He held out one of the plates to Kurt.

Kurt took it and followed Todd around the end of the counter to sit with him at the table, catching the bottle of wine with his tail and bringing it with them.

‘Thank you for cooking,’ he said quietly.

Todd grunted noncommittally in reply. ‘You ain't tasted it yet, dawg.’

‘No,’ Kurt said with a smile. ‘But it smells good.’ He emptied the bottle of wine into the two mugs and placed it on the floor by his chair.

It _tasted_ good too, savoury and hot and filling, surprisingly delicate for the number of herbs Todd had thrown in. He was surprised, but tried not to show it.

‘When did you get the frog?’ Kurt asked, eyes landing on the broken ceramic by the sink. Todd barely glanced at it.

‘An ex gave it to me. Keep meanin’ to fix it, but…’

‘One of those things,’ Kurt supplied. Sometimes it felt like that was all there was to being an adult: a long list of things that needed doing but never quite badly enough to make it to the top of said list.

They didn’t speak much for a while. The harsh glare of the bare lightbulb threw the unlengthening shadows into sharp contrast, cast shade in the hollows of Todd’s cheekbones, shrouded his eyes. Every grain of dust felt sharply illuminated until light dirt coated every surface, distracted the eyes from the elephant hanging in the air. It wasn’t romance or indeed anything like it. It was tiredness and bare bones and the dull ache behind the ribs that said ‘what are we doing?’ It was brittle like a shard of stone.

But it was something. Something solid. And it mattered.

‘What the fuck are we gonna do with all that fuckin’ cream, man?’ Todd asked suddenly, blinking as though he’d only just thought of it. He stared at his nearly empty plate like he’d never seen it before.

‘I don’t know,’ Kurt laughed. ‘I thought you had a plan.’

Todd stared at him incredulously. ‘ _Why_?’

‘Because it vas _your_ idea!’ Kurt replied, throwing his hands in the air. ‘Vhy take so many if you didn’t have any plans for it?’

‘I dunno, dawg, maybe cos it was fuckin’ hilarious?’

Kurt couldn’t really fault the logic, because it was exactly what he might have said. ‘That’s a lot of hot chocolates?’ he suggested.

Todd levelled him with a scathing glance. ‘Kurt, I would fuckin’ _die_ if I drank that much chocolate, holy shit.’ And even though he said his name, it didn’t hurt this time.

‘I vouldn’t.’

‘Ok, so _you_ drink it.’

‘By myself?’ Kurt almost yelped. ‘Nuh uh, no way. You’ve got to deal vith your own dairy problems, I’ve got as many as you have.’

‘Yeah, and what are _you_ plannin’ on doin’ with it?’

‘Uh.’ Kurt hadn’t really thought it through. ‘I guess just… eat it?’

Todd stared at him like he’d grown a second head, and it struck Kurt that he’d never once looked at him like that for his mutation, only the crap he came out with. But then Todd’s expression changed, became challenging, almost belligerent.

‘Bet you can’t down a whole can right now.’

Kurt bristled and took the bait. ‘I so could!’

‘Alright go on, I dare you.’

Kurt swallowed the last mouthful of his meal and chased it with a gulp of wine, brutally ignoring his own stomach’s pleas for mercy.

‘Ok, you’re on. What do I get if I do?’

‘Whatever you want, dawg.’

‘That’s so _boring_ ,’ Kurt whined, ears wilting back against his head a little.

‘Fuck’s sake, Fuzz, I just gave you carte blanche to do whatever the fuck you want, that ain’t good enough?’ Todd thought for a second. ‘Ok, if you can down the whole thing in one go, then-’

‘No, no, actually!’ Kurt interrupted, holding up one oversized finger. ‘We’re _both_ doing it. No backing out, pausing or puking. If one of us does any of those things then they have to make food for gardening time next weekend. If neither of us lose then we’ll cook it together.’

Todd hesitated, mouth dropped open in a voiceless protest. ‘Uh. Fuzz, is this your really shit way of asking me to do garden shit with you again?’

‘No!’ Kurt frowned at him. ‘You vere coming anyway, don’t deny it. And Marta and Amy fed us so we should bring food next time.’

Todd opened his mouth to speak, but apparently thought better of it. His shoulders sagged and he laughed helplessly. ‘Ok, dawg, you win. Whoever finishes a can faster wins.’

Without warning he leapt off his chair. He already had the fridge open and a can in his hand by the time Kurt realised what was happening, bamfing over to the crate with a squawk. ‘No fair!’

Todd didn’t reply, just snapped the lid off the can and stuck it in his mouth with a grin. Kurt quickly followed suit.

As it turned out, a whole can of whipped cream is _a lot_ of cream. Kurt swallowed thickly around the hideous sweetness filling his mouth. Even for him, this was a bit much. But he was determined not to let Todd win, so he kept his finger firmly on the trigger and kept chugging, glowing eyes locked onto black ones.

Of all of the stupid competitive bullshit they’d pulled with each other, this might have taken the cake.

At last the can began to sputter and hiss, sending flecks of white foam to spatter the insides of Kurt’s teeth as it emptied.

‘Hah!’ he said triumphantly, slapping it down onto the counter between them. ‘I vin!’

Todd grimaced and dropped his half a second behind Kurt. ‘Holy shit,’ he ground out. ‘That was fuckin’ _nasty_ , yo.’

Kurt had to agree. His stomach felt like a butter churn. He burped loudly and froze, briefly mortified. But this wasn’t a girlfriend, or a teenage crush. This was _Todd._ And true to form, he barely seemed to notice.

‘You know,’ Todd said conversationally, bending to pick up the can he’d dropped. ‘These still have some use left in ‘em.’

‘What do you mean?’

Todd looked at him and held the can perfectly upright, fastening his lips over the spout and inhaling as he pressed down on the trigger with a hiss of escaping gas. Oh. Oh, Kurt remembered this. The snap and hiss of industrial crackers, the bellying out of brightly coloured balloons at parties.

‘I have to port home,’ he said regretfully. It would have been fun to get a little high, get sillier still than he already felt. But he didn’t want to risk blowing their newfound resolution to stay out of each other’s pants, and he knew that once the edge had been dulled even further, he’d walk straight across it. ‘Another time?’

Todd laughed and grabbed Kurt’s abandoned can to drain too. ‘Sure, dawg. Anytime.’

-

When Kurt took his leave, said goodbye in a warm, quiet voice, taking his crate of assorted scavenging with him, it didn’t feel so hard, didn’t bite in the ways it had last time. Because this time they had _plans_ , and hadn’t bared their skin to each other, hadn’t let themselves be quite so raw and wild. Self-restraint had paid off.

But that didn’t stop him from touching his fingers to his lips when he was curled up in bed alone, imagining what it might have been like had he just decided to throw caution to the wind and kiss Todd again. It didn’t stop his hand from drifting downward, imagining a wide mouth and devilish tongue trailing down his body. Didn’t stop him from breathing out the sighing whisper of a name he pretended he didn’t hear. It didn’t stop him from seeing black eyes with red irises when he came.

Maybe his self-restraint wasn’t as good as he’d thought it was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look at them, trying to be sensible and shit. We'll see how well that works out.
> 
> SpaceVinci, I hope the boys' attempts at communication are woefully inadequate but satisfying nonetheless! ;D
> 
> The whipped cream dumpster find actually happened to a friend of mine - he found 49 cans with a friend when they lived in a squat, and for the next few days it was Dairy City (they didn't have a fridge though - imagine how hard it is to get through almost 50 cans of whipped cream in 3 days!)


	8. Surround Yourself With Beauty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys practise being well-fed artists and Kurt gets experimental with whipped cream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At last! Another chapter! Written almost entirely in a single night because my writing motivation fluctuates WILDLY. We're nearing the end, y'all. Only, what, three more chapters to go? This is officially the longest fic I've ever written (I mean, it has been for ages) and I'm? Actually on track to finish it??
> 
> The power of an OTP, eh? :')

‘Guten morgen!’

Kurt was met with a wholehearted groan and the glimpse of a pale, mottled arm bending out from under the bedclothes to push brown hair out of bleary eyes. The room was dark, the only light filtering in palely around the edges of the plywood sheet Todd had leaned against the window for a blind.

‘Dawg, what fuckin’ time is it?’ Todd’s voice came croaky and groaning, like it hadn’t been used in years.

‘You look terrible,’ Kurt replied brightly instead of answering the question.

The comforter shuffled away from a pinched face. Black eyes glared at him in the dim light. Kurt determinedly ignored the little flip in his stomach at the sight of Todd’s long brown hair all tousled around his cheeks, his skin still creased with pink from the imprint of the pillow. He tried not to think about slipping into the bed beside him, sharing lazy kisses and running furred hands over smooth skin. They’d done so well. Over a month since that evening in Todd’s kitchen where they’d agreed to keep out of each other’s pants. They hadn’t wavered. At least, not where the other could see.

As far as Kurt knew, Todd didn’t waver at all. He hadn’t caught that searing gaze on him again, hadn’t had even a hint that the other man still undressed him with his eyes when he wasn’t looking. He didn’t think he’d been caught either, hoped he hadn’t. It was simpler that way. Less embarrassing.

They’d both been stalwart. He tried to ignore the little sigh inside that said ‘ _how dull’_. Dull was good. Boring didn’t hurt like rolling tides and heat and facing the inevitability of heartbreak did. This was safer, for both of them.

He strode across the room to pick up the plywood and drag it aside, letting the afternoon sunlight crash in through the glass like an obnoxious screech.

Todd, as he’d expected, just groaned again and rolled over, burying his face under the pillow.

‘Oh no you don’t, mein freund!’ Kodd exclaimed, and leaped onto the bed, kneeling beside Todd’s prone form. ‘You said 1PM and 1PM it is. You are getting up now.’

‘Make me,’ Todd mumbled. Or at least, Kurt thought he did. It could have been just another groan.

‘You asked for it.’ Blue hands ripped away the cover and snaked around Todd’s waist, thick fingers tickling mercilessly at his exposed sides.

‘Oh, you fuckin’-’ Todd’s strong legs kicked up and Kurt narrowly dodged, leaning in close to run teasing hands over Todd’s flat belly.

‘You vill have to be faster than that!’

‘Fuuuck you.’ Todd’s webbed hands slapped at him and grasped each wrist in a vicelike grip, pulling them down to press into the mattress at his sides. Time slowed, puddled into a long second as black eyes met gold. Two chests panted with quiet exertion, one bare and dappled like tree-shadows on a sunny day and one covered by both fur and fabric. Kurt swallowed hard. Then, belatedly realising he was lacking some much-needed balance after being yanked abruptly down like that, he shuffled his legs and tried to sit up, to pull away before he collapsed forward. Todd released his wrists without complaint and lay there, harsh breathing slowly returning to normal. Kurt wanted to touch him, trace light fingers around the borders of the dark patches of his skin. He wanted to press his lips to the deep green mark where Todd’s neck joined his shoulder, wanted to lick along the join between dark and pale. Wanted to hear the musical sounds Todd would make if he did. He looked away.

The sun was high in the sky at this time, lighting up the windowsill and a sharp slash of the bare, wooden floor. Dust motes swirled idly in the brightness, sparkling silently like angels. The quiet stretched out like a lengthening shadow.

‘Do you vant me to come back later?’ he asked quietly, finally looking back at Todd.

The other man’s dappled arm came up to push his hair back out of his face again with a sigh. ‘Nn-nn.’ He shook his head. ‘Naw dawg, I’ll get up. I had a late one is all.’

‘Oh yeah?’ Kurt grinned, baring sharp canines. ‘Vhat vere you doing? Getting drunk on rooftops vith strangers again?’ He tried to ignore the tiny clench in his belly that feared Todd might have been doing exactly that. Todd was his friend, not his lover. He was _not_ going to get jealous over him doing things with other people that Kurt had _explicitly_ said he was not down for.

Todd shot him a withering look.

‘First off, you ain’t a stranger, dawg, you’re a fuckin’ asshole I used to beat on at school and _second,_ no, I had to work late on some rich fucker’s pussy wagon.’

‘You beat on _me_?’ Kurt grinned and poked Todd in the side again with his tail, making him squirm away. ‘I seem to remember this _very_ differently.’

‘Maybe that’s cos I hit you in the head so much,’ Todd muttered, apparently deciding once and for all that enough was enough and swinging his feet down onto the cold floor. ‘Scoot, I gotta shower. Make some coffee or somethin’.’

Kurt laughed and raised his hands in surrender. ‘Okay, okay, Mr. Grumpy Pants, I’ll go make some caw-ffee.’

‘Dawg, you are _throwing_ in a glass house.’ Todd staggered to his feet and headed toward the door.

‘At least _my_ accent sounds sophisticated.’ Kurt ruined the effect by sticking out his tongue at the other man’s back. He’d done that a lot more in the last month than he had in years. Something about Todd brought out his childish side.

‘You sound like Dracula’s demented cousin, yo.’ Todd grabbed a greying towel off the back of the bedroom door and slung it over his shoulder. ‘Do _not_ fuck with the hot water or I will _shave_ you.’

Kurt’s laughter echoed around the suddenly empty room. Then he ‘ported down to the kitchen and started heating a pot of water for coffee.

-

By the time Todd came down, his black coffee with two sugars was lukewarm, steam barely just curling off its surface into the shaft of sunlight prying into the kitchen. If there was one thing Kurt had noticed over the time of their tentative friendship, it was that Todd took ridiculously long showers. And that the water stopped running about ten minutes in. Which meant Todd must either just sit in the bathroom for half an hour on the can, be finicky as fuck about getting dry or, what Kurt privately suspected, put the plug in and sit in the gathered water for a while just soaking his strange, smooth skin. It would make the most sense. He was an amphibian, right? Water was his element.

When at last his friend stumbled into the kitchen, black eyes only a little less bleary, Kurt was sat cross-legged on the bare floor, paintbrush in hand as he trailed green tracery up a table leg, dotting messy, bright flowers at the end of each ‘tendril’. He wasn’t very good, he knew that, but he’d come to terms with it after a lifetime of clumsy tridactyl hands and just did what he could.

Today was the day they turned this depressingly beige house into something beautiful, somewhere full of colour and sunlight. Kurt’s apartment might be miserable, but there was no reason Todd’s place had to be too. After all, it wasn’t like he had a deposit to get back. As far as they knew, no one was ever going to reclaim this house, so they might as well make it a work of art for the time Todd did have in it. He’d been surprisingly amenable to Kurt’s suggestion, had let him drunkenly ramble about God and colour and the importance of beauty in the human psyche for what felt like hours. Had just shrugged and said ‘why not?’ and started gathering paint of all kinds. They’d already covered half of the stained walls with a clean base coat over the week prior, but ‘minimalist’ was not Todd’s style, and today was finally the _fun_ day.

‘Yo, you started without me?’ Todd’s tone didn’t _sound_ too offended, so Kurt flashed him a grin as the other man drained his coffee cup in one long gulp.

‘Vell what do you expect vhen you take an _hour_ in the bathroom?’

‘Hey.’ Todd pointed one webbed finger at him. ‘I did _not_ take a whole-ass hour.’

‘Vell I got bored. Sue me.’ And with that, Kurt resumed painting. ‘Ve are bringing some colour into zis dump, yes? So let me continue being an artist.’

Todd snorted. ‘Artist, my ass.’

‘I vill tattoo you in your sleep,’ Kurt threatened idly, deftly filling in a yellow rose at the end of a stalk just below the tabletop. He could. He had needles, somewhere.

‘No you won’t,’ Todd disagreed. Kurt couldn’t really argue with that.

The amphibious mutant leapt smoothly onto the table, which barely shook. It wasn’t pretty, but it was solid. ‘Pass us some paint then.’

Kurt passed up a paintbrush and a plate with a handful of colours squeezed out onto it. They hadn’t been able to find much spray paint, so Todd had decided to save it for the walls. Everything else could just be done by hand.

Companionable silence filled the kitchen, and once again Kurt felt a little rush of gratitude that they’d managed to salvage some kind of friendship out of what had happened a few months before. The awkward yearning was still there, at least for him, but that was manageable. He’d dealt with a lot of that over the course of his life. It was nothing new.

But, he thought, glancing up quickly at Todd’s focused face in greedy snatches, it was very hard not to think about it sometimes. He’d almost slipped up that morning, felt like maybe he’d crossed a subtle line even though he hadn’t done anything he considered… untoward. Tickling was platonic, right? Todd didn’t look at him, didn’t catch his gaze, so Kurt let himself glance up more frequently, his painting slowing down considerably as he let his eyes flick up to trace over Todd’s frown, the line between his brows, the way he casually licked the tip of his paintbrush to sharpen it like the acrylic paint didn’t taste like shit. His wide mouth was pursed in concentration, black eyes intent on his work as he shuffled backward every few minutes, chasing himself across with colour. Kurt wondered what he was painting.

They continued in silence, companionable and easy.

After almost an hour, Todd suddenly stretched his arms up over his head with a series of deep clicks and set aside his paintbrush, rolling stiff shoulders. ‘I’m done. I can’t be fucked anymore. You want lunch?’

‘Ja,’ Kurt replied with a smile, neglecting to mention that he’d eaten lunch before he came. What of it? Food was fairly plentiful with their efficient dumpster teamwork. He hadn’t gone hungry – or paid for anything except treats or snacks – in weeks. Neither had Todd, and it was starting to look good on him. He was no longer so haggard, drawn tight like a bowstring over his own bones. The tension was there, still, but he was softer now, like he’d taken the time to exhale.

‘Ok…’ Todd hopped down from the table and stretched his arms over his head again as he walked to the fridge. ‘We got… uh, ah _sweet_ , we got leftovers. Guess I did cook when I got in.’

‘I thought you said you vere at work,’ Kurt said teasingly, standing to examine the drying paint on the tabletop. It was a mandala, intricate and sparsely decorated with splashes of bright colour. He was surprised by its evenness – Todd apparently had a good eye as well as steady hands.

Todd’s head popped out from around the fridge door, black eyes already rolling. ‘Yeah an’ I got drunk with Kat after.’

‘Ooooh,’ Kurt warbled, trying for jokey. He didn’t know much about Kat beyond Todd worked with her, and she made him laugh. It was none of his business. He crouched back down – they obviously weren’t going to be using the table for a while. ‘Did you braid each other’s hair and talk about boys?’ He hoped more sharply than he’d expected that it wasn’t the alternative. His tail looped itself in tense circles, giving him away. Hopefully Todd wouldn’t notice.

The other man’s head came back around the fridge door, now bearing an expression from somewhere in the no-man’s-land between stupefied and irritated. ‘It wasn’t a _slumber party_ , dawg. Ay, think fast.’ And suddenly a can was flying through the air. Kurt caught it in his restless tail and transferred it to a furred hand.

‘You still have some of these?’ he marvelled, turning the can of whipped cream around in his fingers. It was over a month out of date, but that meant nothing. In a fridge, this stuff could outlast the human race.

‘You _don’t_?’ Todd stared at him, clearly slightly horrified and also, maybe, a little impressed. ‘The fuck did you _do_ with all of them?’

‘I… ate them?’ Kurt replied slowly. ‘That was… sort of why we took them, yes?’

‘Jesus Christ, I would _not_ wanna be your arteries, dawg.’

‘I think I would not want that either.’

Todd snorted and carried the Tupperware tub of leftovers over to where Kurt sat on the floor. ‘It’s just pigeon’n’potatoes fried up.’

‘Did you catch it?’ Kurt asked, surprised.

Todd shrugged and popped the lid, sinking into his usual crouch beside the other man. ‘Yeah, sometimes I get lucky.’

‘Vith your tongue?’

‘No, my fuckin’ hands. What do _you_ think?’ Todd replied sarcastically, snatching up some of the mess in the box with said tongue.

Kurt had yet to see Todd get lucky when attempting to snatch a bird. But he didn’t try in front of him very often. Maybe he didn’t want to freak him out. But as that green tongue lashed out and caught up another chunk of pigeon, he could see how it could work. It was probably more reliable than ‘porting and trying to wildly grab at whatever he was aiming at as it leapt away. He’d never quite gotten past the anxiety over setting a trap and potentially leaving something struggling and frightened for hours. He’d been there too often himself to want that for any creature.

Todd’s tongue caught up another mouthful of food.

Kurt stuck his own tongue out and went cross-eyed to stare at it. ‘Huh, mine doesn’t seem to be working. Guess my hands vill have to do.’ He reached into the box with his fingers and pulled out a chunk of potato and some pigeon meat.

Todd heaved a longsuffering sigh. ‘Are you gonna make that joke _every_ time we eat together?’

‘Vell if you want I can progress to the next stage earlier than planned and just start trying to grab your tongue when you do it.’

Todd spluttered out a laugh. ‘With what, yo?’ His voice changed. ‘You gonna get your tail involved or bite it right outta the air?’

Oh. Oh, that _tone_. That subtle huskiness under the words, that intoxicating strand of want that Kurt hadn’t heard in Todd’s voice for all of the month they’d been spending time together. It hit like the clapper of a bell and sent a warm shiver down the back of his neck. But they’d agreed. They’d agreed not to do this. So Kurt laughed it off, and held up pigeon-smeared fingers.

‘Vith my _bare hands_ , aah!’ He wiggled them at Todd, smiling. ‘I don’t think you’d want to risk my teeth anyway.’

Todd nodded seriously. ‘Oh yeah, I was definitely complaining about your teeth last time they got near the damn thing, wasn’t I?’

And Kurt… Kurt froze. How was he supposed to respond to that?

Todd gave no sign that he’d noticed Kurt’s sudden bemusement, lashing his tongue out to catch up another mouthful of food from the Tupperware and rocking back on his heels to chew it. Kurt tried to ignore the sudden ache in the pit of his stomach and focused his attention on scooping up soggy potato.

‘She ain’t into guys, y’know,’ the amphibious mutant said at last, swallowing. ‘Kat, I mean. We spent a hell of a lot of last night just talkin’ about her girl problems. Does that count as talkin’ about boys?’

Kurt pretended to think it over, giving time for the embarrassing relief that fluttered in his chest to calm. ‘Yes, I think that counts.’

-

After they’d finished the food, Kurt washed up the Tupperware while Todd collected an assortment of spray paints from cupboards and cardboard boxes and placed them in a box by his feet. Then he started spraying the kitchen wall with a bright slash of vibrant green.

Kurt took his time, drawing out the washing and drying process by almost fifteen minutes as he watched colour blossom under Todd’s broad, webbed hands, a violent clash of pink and yellow and blue and green that only started to resolve itself into something coherent after Kurt had put both the box and cloth away and cleaned out the sink.

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the counter and his head on his folded hands, golden eyes tracking every movement of the can, every precise jet or broad stroke. As he watched, a garden of flowers came into being, subtly outlined with fine threads of black and darker colours.

‘You’re… really good at this,’ he said, and winced at the surprise evident in his voice.

‘Well I spent a long time doin’ it, dawg,’ Todd said as though that explained it. He shook a new can for a few seconds before sending an eruption of metallic gold out of the nozzle to dot a few carefully chosen petals. Kurt tiled his head. That was the only wall in the kitchen that caught the sun. When it set, it would glint off those little gold spots like sparks, lighting up the whole picture. It was masterful.

‘Vhen did you learn?’ he asked, eyes fixed on the mural that had been almost carved out of the wall, filled in backwards like it had always belonged there and Todd was merely unveiling it.

‘Didn’t really,’ Todd said with a shrug, tossing the gold can back amongst the rest. ‘Started out tagging bridges in the city when I was a kid. Never really quit.’

A thought occurred to Kurt. ‘Did you do that… caricature,’ the word was still hard to say, ‘of Principal Kelly in ze second floor bathroom at Bayville High? The one with the Sentinel?’

He couldn’t see Todd’s face, but he could _hear_ the smirk. ‘Yeah, dawg, that was me.’

‘Vhy aren’t you… why didn’t you pursue it? Be an artist?’ Kurt asked. He’d never realised that Todd was good at anything more than stealing and being an annoying little shit back then. He’d never _thought_.

Todd shrugged, those sharp, strong shoulders rising and falling quickly, defensive. ‘Cos I ain’t one, dawg. I’m just a tagger.’

Kurt’s spine shot straight and his tail snapped out behind him. ‘No you _aren’t_ ,’ he said fiercely, more intensely than he’d expected. ‘You’re- you’re _really fucking good,_ man.’

Todd still didn’t look at him, bending to shuffle the cans back into some kind of order in the box. ‘There ain’t much call for painters in Magneto’s mutant army, dawg.’

That bit somewhere close to the heart, and Kurt went quiet for a moment. ‘There vasn’t in the Institute, either,’ he said. But it wasn’t the same, and he knew it. Xavier might have been as crazy as Magneto, but he was gentler in the face, kinder where you could see. He had encouraged everyone to pursue their skills and passions, whether it was useful or not. As long as it didn’t interfere. ‘Vhat about now?’ he asked.

Todd hefted the box onto his hip and turned with a strange smile Kurt couldn’t place, those black eyes narrowed. ‘Who you think did the one in the garden?’

That riotous splash of colour across the back wall, a slash of music on beige brick. ‘Zat vas _you_?’

Todd shrugged awkwardly, keeping a firm hold of the box clamped to his side.

‘It _vas_ ,’ Kurt breathed, slightly dumbstruck. Of course it was. Who else could have reached that far up the wall without leaving ladder prints and mulch scattered across the ground? ‘What does it say?’ He’d still not worked that out. The font was too wild, the letters too involved for his untrained eyes to follow.

Todd snorted. ‘Thought you thought I was good, yo.’ But then a wide grin stretched across that elastic face and softened the words. He shrugged, another quick, unsettled motion. ‘S’just bullshit, yo. I put some letters together I thought looked good.’

That wasn’t true. Kurt could see it in the sharp, awkward line of Todd’s neck, the tension in his shoulders. But he was tactful enough to let it go.

-

The rest of the afternoon for Kurt was more or less spent watching Todd paint the walls of the house and offering suggestions or comment, passing him cans when needed. At one point he prudently went through the whole house and opened every window for ventilation. He still carried the can of cream Todd had thrown him, and took glugs from it every now and then, to Todd’s seemingly bottomless disgust. Apparently Todd had meant it when he said he didn’t go for sweet food anymore. How the mighty had fallen.

Todd’s art flourished through the house like a trailing vine, sending out blooms in the most unexpected of places, like under the toilet roll holder or inside the panels on the back of a door. Kurt would have liked to do more himself, but he had no illusions about his ability and so limited himself to a wall in Todd’s bedroom that the amphibious mutant had all but forced him to paint.

‘It ain’t fair to offer a guy a hand paintin’ and then just sit there, dawg.’ But Kurt could hear the subtle encouragement under the words, the insistence that his input _was_ wanted, was valued here. Todd didn’t care if the mural was good, he just wanted it to happen. Kurt dared to hope, just a little, that Todd specifically wanted there to be a mark that _he_ had left. He tried – and failed – not to overthink the fact that it was a wall in his bedroom.

At last, he took a step back and stared at the painting he’d sprayed across the wall of Todd’s room. He’d relegated himself to whatever they had most of, knowing he wasn’t as precise and sparing with his strokes as Todd, so it was primarily done in black, purple and an off-white colour that wanted to be yellow but couldn’t summon the courage. He’d tried for an inverted galaxy, knowing there wasn’t enough black to fully coat the wall, but it had come out like some alien cloudscape. It would have to do. It wasn’t calming by any stretch of the imagination, but it wasn’t completely ugly either. At least he’d learned something today: he was definitely more precise with his tail than his left hand.

After a minute or two of silently judging himself, his spraypainting skills and his general artistic inability, Kurt realised he couldn’t hear Todd’s footsteps, the quiet shuffle of bare feet and clinking cans, the hiss of propellant. His ears pricked. Nothing.

He walked silently down the stairs, spreading his weight to avoid creaking, his heart pounding. What if something was wrong? Possibilities raced through his mind: SHIELD, Magneto, too many fumes…

But then he found Todd, sprawled over the couch in the tiny living room. He had passed out like a drunk, mouth open wide in a face tilted back so far it looked uncomfortable, quiet snores making their way past his lips. He’d obviously intended to sit down for a moment and had fallen asleep before he’d realised. A can lounged in his webbed hand – blue – and Kurt gently plucked it from his loosening grip before it could fall and wake him with its clatter. He realised that in his own right hand he still held the can of whipped cream. Lot of use that would have been against an assailant. At least the spray paint had _range_.

The elf padded quietly across the room, collecting paint cans and depositing them in the cardboard box before carefully carrying them to the kitchen and away from the sleeping Toad. With a start, he realised it was dark outside. They’d been painting for hours. No wonder he felt lightheaded. At least the fumes had faded downstairs. He busied himself closing windows and latching them, shutting out the cold and the night while Todd slept. How late had he been up last night?

At last, he returned to the lounge and, for want of anything better to do, crouched by the old electric ‘fireplace’ and watched Todd for a few minutes. It wasn’t creepy. It _wasn’t_. He was making sure he was breathing, that was all. Todd’s slim chest rose and fell in time with those totally-not-adorable quiet snores. So he was breathing. Kurt didn’t look away. Okay, maybe it was creepy.

Todd’s face changed entirely when he was asleep, sinking into itself and collapsing somehow, every muscle lax. His elastic skin draped itself over loosened muscles, softening and taking years off him. When he was asleep, he looked closer to twenty than thirty, like a kid with all his adulthood ahead of him. Really he still was. So was Kurt. It didn’t feel that way. How could twenty eight feel so _old_?

Kurt folded his arms across his knees and rested his chin on them with a sigh. Sometimes it was hard not to feel bitter about the way the world had turned out. They’d been promised all the same things everyone else had – hard work, good food, safety, sunshine. Kids and a house, a career. But that had never been a possibility for mutants, not ones like him and Todd. And then the wave had come, and the world had changed. Ten years ago, Kurt had never thought he’d leave the X Men, not for a life of diving in dumpsters and trying to grub something ephemeral out of the dirt along with the plants he sowed. Because that was all it was really, something to hold onto, something tangible.

Some of the lettuces had perked up over the last month. They were little beings that wouldn’t have survived – wouldn’t _exist_ – without him. Without Marta and Amy and Todd. That was special. It had to be. Or everything was dust, and nothing mattered. And Kurt couldn’t bear that, couldn’t stand idly by and let himself swirl into nihilism and hopelessness. He didn’t want that for Todd either.

God, he _ached_. He hadn’t thought this would be so hard, this ironclad decision to be friends, to leave their flirtation where it belonged: in the past. He hadn’t thought he’d still be struggling not to reach out and touch, to take. He was so greedy. Was it wrong to want this badly? Was it even Todd he wanted, or just… someone? Something? He tried to think, idly squirting some cream into his mouth and rocking on his heels. His eyes lifted to scour the ceiling, the swirling patterns Todd had hidden there.

He hadn’t wanted like this before Todd showed up. Yeah, he’d been lonely, sad. He’d been depressed as hell. But he hadn’t ached with it, hadn’t wished for hands on him every day like he did now. Every morning he woke up thinking, not about Todd specifically, but about what it would be like to wake up beside someone, share lazy kisses and sleepy sex, to feel hands in his fur again. Webbed hands.

He sighed out a shuddering breath and ran his hands through his own hair. Fuck. He closed his eyes. It shouldn’t be this hard. Todd wasn’t even… he wasn’t _nice_. He wasn’t attractive, or pretty, or sweet. He was rude and obnoxious and ugly and Kurt wanted him so badly his ribs felt like they’d crack with it.

But. This wasn’t healthy, wasn’t safe. Neither of them knew when Todd would next have someone after him, because surely it was a ‘when’ and not an ‘if’. Maybe someone would come after Kurt first. Maybe no one was coming. They didn’t know. And Kurt had been… so stable before. He’d been miserable, yes, but he’d been steady. And now… now everything felt like living on a razor’s edge, like dancing on a violin string. Any move Todd made rang through him like a chord, vibrating up through his soul like a resonating crystal note.

Ugh. Kurt dragged his fingers down his face, pulling at the fur and skin beneath. He was getting nowhere, catching himself up in tangled webs of thought and complicated desire like this. He needed something simple. Something easy.

So he stood up and sprayed half a can of cream into Todd’s open hand.

Lurking beside the couch, he let his tail drift out close to Todd’s sleeping face and brushed it lightly across one sallow cheek, tracing the dappled shade of his cheekbone. Nothing. It returned in another pass, trailing featherlight over the hook of Todd’s proud nose, and this time it worked exactly as he’d hoped.

Todd’s hand came up to sleepily scratch his face, and suddenly he was spluttering and coughing as a glob of whipped cream covered both mouth and nose.

Kurt cackled loudly, doubling up in laughter as Todd’s outraged squawk erupted from the mass of melting white goop on his face.

‘What the _fuck_?’ Todd exclaimed, gaping for a moment at his own hand. Then those black eyes narrowed and focused in on Kurt. ‘Oh you are _dead_ , boy!’ And he vaulted over the back of the couch, hands outstretched to catch him.

Kurt turned and ran, fleeing out of the door and skidding down the hall before charging up the stairs on three limbs, can held awkwardly in one hand. Strange, familiar thumps told him Todd was hopping up after him, bouncing between stairs and wall, and he ‘ported back down to the first floor in a puff of violet smoke, running into the kitchen and darting behind the counter.

‘You fuckin’!’ He heard from upstairs, and Todd thundered back down the stairs, hopping full-pelt into the kitchen. To Kurt’s surprise, he jumped straight past the counter without looking, and yanked the fridge open. Oh.

Todd’s hand reappeared from the fridge holding a matching can – Kurt hadn’t realised there were more left – and he turned to go in search, eyes narrowed and mouth drawn wide in a predatory grin. He hadn’t expected Kurt to be right in front of him.

The elf leapt forward, can held out, and sprayed cream directly into Todd’s hair before ‘porting into the living room.

Todd’s aggravated yelp sounded through the wall and Kurt couldn’t hold back a loud laugh, immediately giving away his position. Todd was through in half a second, hopping forward before the blue man could get away and pinning him to the wall with an arm across his chest, hips glued to his as the greener mutant liberally coated Kurt’s hair in whipped cream.

‘Ahk!’ Kurt choked out, and Todd used the opportunity to jam the nozzle into his mouth and press the trigger again. ‘Gurk!’ This time he really did choke, coughing and sending flecks of cream across Todd’s already-dripping face. His tail wound up to tightly bind around Todd’s trigger hand, trying to pull it away from his head.

Everything paused for a moment while he regained his breath. Todd kept him pinned.

‘You done?’ Black eyes surveyed him. A wicked grin spread across that wide mouth. ‘Cos I’m only just gettin’ started, yo.’ His hand moved, a blue tail unable to hold back the unexpected motion. White erupted over Kurt’s head again, dripping down his brow and almost running into his eyes.

‘I yield, I yield!’ he laughed, dropping the can and bringing his hands up to wipe cream away from his eyes, licking it off blue fingers before trying to claw it out of his eyebrows.

‘Yeah?’ Todd shoved him roughly, pressing him harder against the wall. Kurt suddenly became fiercely aware of all the places their bodies touched; the arm like an iron bar across his chest, the slim hips pinning his own to the wall, the awkward tangle of their legs. The black eyes boring into him. Gott, he wanted. He opened his mouth, licked his lips. Caught the brief snag of Todd’s eyes following the movement. He knew with crystal clarity that if he leaned in, Todd would surge up to meet him. And everything would be fucked.

He pushed back, and Todd let him, dropping his arm from against the blue man’s chest.

‘It is going to take me _forever_ to get this out of my fur.’

Todd barked out a laugh and stepped away, lashing out with his tongue to scoop up the abandoned can of cream and get it safely out of the elf’s reach. ‘And who’s fault is that, yo?’

‘Hmm,’ Kurt pretended to think about it. ‘Definitely yours, you put it there.’

Todd rolled his yes. ‘You started it.’

‘Yes, but I am “still a fuckin’ fifteen year old”. You’re supposed to be the mature one here.’

Todd snorted. ‘Yeah, peak grownup right here, taggin’ my own house all day.’

Kurt couldn’t think of a witty comeback for that, so he just said, ‘I like it.’

‘What, my maturity level or the paint?’

‘Both.’ Kurt spread his hands. ‘I am an equal opportunities approver of Todd Tolensky.’

This time Todd laughed so hard he nearly dropped the two cans of whipped cream. ‘Tell that to snotty li’l sixteen year old Nightcreeper. He’d have an aneurysm.’

‘Vell sixteen year old _Nightcrawler_ vas a closeted and stupid teenager,’ Kurt said loftily. ‘I am the much improved version.’

‘The version that approves of homeless assholes who disappear for months at a time.’ Todd’s tone sent a sharp sensation through Kurt. There was something in it that tasted sour, bitter somehow. He told himself not to reach for it, not to think too hard about it. It didn’t matter. It didn’t.

‘Yes,’ he said simply. And standing there, looking at Todd with cream smeared across his face and forming greasy lumps in his hair, a streak of white dripping down his nose, his webbed hands covered in layers of paint, he meant it. He wasn’t angry anymore, wasn’t hurt. Not from Todd’s disappearance.

A pained expression crossed Todd’s face, a crumping, fleeting frown, before he sighed and tense shoulders tightened further. Walls were built and levelled behind black eyes. ‘Thanks, yo,’ he said quietly, and Kurt could tell he meant it too.

-

Todd let Kurt take the first shower, because his fur took so long to dry. He tried to be quick and not use up all the heat, turning the shower on and off as he soaped up and rinsed out again. He really didn’t want any of the cream lingering in his fur – it started to smell like bad milk after a few hours and that wasn’t really his style. Thankfully they’d decided early on that Kurt should keep a pair of spare towels at Todd’s house in case gardening sessions got messy, so he didn’t have to go home just to get clean. Kurt really didn’t want to go back to his lonely, depressing apartment right now.

By the time he came down, dry enough to walk around without dripping but not yet enough to wear anything other than a towel, Todd had rummaged through the cupboards and put together some kind of fried rice full of mushrooms and wilting vegetables. The shorter man fled to the bathroom with his plate immediately and left Kurt to eat as he air-dried. It was kind of a relief.

Half an hour passed and Kurt finished his meal, politely washing up his plate before drying it and returning it to the rack. He figured he was dry enough to put on a shirt now, and did so, giving himself one last go-over with the second towel before slipping into his clothes.

Todd sometimes took forever in the bath once he was up there, and even if it was his second bath in a day that didn’t necessarily mean it would be any different, so Kurt went through the fridge for the sixpack of half-crushed beer cans they’d unearthed the week before, cracking one of the remaining pair open and retiring to the couch in the living room to drink it. Did it count as drinking alone if you were in a friend’s house? He didn’t really care. It was the kind of evening where beer was a good decision.

In time, Todd reappeared, damp and glistening slightly with that light film his skin seemed to produce after a long time immersed in water. He noticed the beer in Kurt’s hand and went to collect its twin from the fridge before returning to sit beside the blue man.

‘What’s on the box?’ he asked and Kurt laughed, staring at the broken electrical fireplace.

‘You and me I think.’ He pointed one blue finger at their faint reflections in the glass panel. ‘See? It’s not a very good show. But now there’s more than one character, who knows?’

‘Yeah, I heard we missed the prank video earlier,’ Todd said with a straight face, and they both laughed, taking a simultaneous sip of beer.

It was hard, in some ways, Kurt reflected, but very easy in others. They made each other laugh, they could hang out for hours without talking while they each focused on other things. They worked well enough together. Even when they clashed it was usually funny afterward. It was the little things they got each other’s backs up over.

They needed an instrument. Something to give these awkward, stretching moments purpose. Kurt thought about asking Todd if he still beatboxed, but he knew he did. He’d caught him doing it under his breath absentmindedly as he worked, or walked along. Sometimes if a dumpster was just the right level of empty, he’d make funny sounds into it just to hear the echo. Kurt kind of liked it; it added a soundtrack to the world. Maybe _he_ should have learned to beatbox. It didn’t involve hands, after all.

‘You want some weed?’ Todd asked abruptly.

‘Uh.’ Kurt shook his head, startled. That was definitely something to give this liminal, breathing space purpose. ‘Uh, yeah, yes. Vhy not?’ He hadn’t smoked in a long time.

‘Okay.’ Todd stood and left, returning a few minutes later with a battered tin in his hands. Wordlessly, he sat on the couch and took out a baggie, a grinder and papers. Kurt watched his webbed fingers as they deftly rolled a joint, setting a tightly curled roach at the end. He’d never gotten the hang of it himself, with three digits to work with rather than five. A sliver of green tongue appeared between pale lips to lick the paper cylinder shut.

‘You are very fast.’

Todd shrugged noncommittally. ‘Another thing I’ve been doin’ a while, I guess.’ He held out the joint and lighter, and Kurt took them hesitantly while the components were cleared away and placed aside.

He stuck the joint between blue lips and lit the end, sucking gently to draw the cherry up. When it had caught and he had a lungful, he passed it back. Exhaled slowly. It burned his throat. It really had been a long time. He tried hard not to cough, knowing that if he started he wouldn’t stop.

Todd sucked in a deep breath like it was nothing, held it for a few heartbeats and breathed out slowly, like he was savouring it. He took a quick second hit before passing it back. It was obvious he’d had a lot more practice at this.

Kurt chased his next breath with the remnants of his beer. The back of his throat started to feel subtly tight, that weird, clammy sensation that always came after the first few puffs. His eyes stung softly, like he was suddenly tired.

Between them, they finished it quickly enough, and Kurt settled back comfortably into the couch cushions, his beer cradled in his hands.

‘Thank you for sharing,’ he said slowly, feeling like he was speaking underwater.

‘S’coo.’

Kurt laughed, then giggled and didn’t stop for a moment. ‘You sound just like you did vhen ve vere kids.’

Todd huffed out a laugh and pressed his shoulders back into the couch, rolling them slightly as the tension visibly leaked out of his body. ‘Well what do you expect, dawg, I’m the same person.’

‘No,’ Kurt said softly, golden eyes lingering on Todd’s sharp, broad face. ‘You aren’t.’

Todd’s eyes slid sideways and caught his. A small smile lifted the corner of his wide mouth. ‘Guess not. Neither are you.’

Kurt sighed and finished his beer, setting the can gently on the floor with a click. ‘I think that’s a good thing.’

Todd shrugged. ‘I dunno.’ He paused, staring over Kurt’s shoulder for a long minute before black eyes met gold again. ‘I always kinda liked you.’

Kurt’s brow wrinkled in a guilty frown. He wanted to be able to say the same, or something similar, but it wasn’t true.

‘Dawg, don’t go lookin’ like I kicked your puppy,’ Todd laughed. His eyes softened with fondness. Kurt’s stomach gave a lazy leap. ‘I know you din’t like me much back then. Knew it then too.’ He drew in a breath and huffed it out in a sad, amused laugh. ‘It sucked, yeah, but I ain’t mad about it. Not like I made it easy. I was kinda… hard to love back then.’ He snorted and looked away, taking a sip from his beer. ‘Still am.’

It wasn’t said sadly. It wasn’t melancholic, asking for reassurance or to be denied. It was just a throwaway statement of something Todd believed to be fact, but still...

‘No you aren’t,’ Kurt said without thinking. Oh, this was dangerous ground. He was too stoned to approach this topic, to circle this arena without diving in. ‘I think you’re fine.’ He settled himself back, wriggling his shoulders to get comfortable. ‘Ve are all hard to love sometimes. Zat’s just life. People vill love you anyway. You just…’ He chewed air for a moment. ‘Have to find the right ones.’

Todd chuckled. ‘Well Amy definitely loves _you_.’

Kurt could feel his face light up, cheeks aching from a deep smile at the thought of the little girl. ‘Yes. I think she does. And she loves you too, she likes it when you catch flies.’

Todd nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yeah, gotta say she’s the first person to rate them outta ten every time.’

‘Vhat vas the awful one, the one she gave you a “one” for?’

Todd pulled a face. ‘Snapped a stinkbug an’ nearly puked.’

‘Oh wow, that’s definitely a poor show,’ Kurt said with a lazy grin. ‘You’re lucky she gave you a one and not zero. You should know better at your age.’

‘Fuck you.’ It was said warmly though, like a friend. The light punch to Kurt’s shoulder backed it up. Todd’s hand didn’t linger.

-

They played cards after that, slowly and badly with fumbling, intoxicated hands that didn’t seem to quite want to snap the cards down neatly like they should. The cards slid over the curved surface of the couch cushions and got lost down the cracks, spilled out onto the floor in a clumsy cascade. They laughed a lot.

And when, in a long period of silence, Kurt finally tipped his head back against the back of the couch, closed his eyes, let his mind drift away from its anchor, he felt like he was safe. At some point in this languid, limpid space, in this strange place they’d carved out somewhere between friend and stranger, it had started to feel like home.

He awoke into a half-doze later in the dark recesses of the night to find himself lying down, head cradled on strong thighs with long, gentle fingers carding through his hair. He was too asleep to feel surprised that Todd hadn’t gone upstairs to bed, too heavy with melatonin to think of more than rolling over and pressing his face into the cool fabric of a shirt, curling his fingers in front of his own mouth like he always did when he slept, like he was whispering secrets into the hollow of his hand. And if he purred for a while there, a low, contented rumble as he drifted back off, who was to know? It was just him and Todd.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah they haven't pulled their heads out of their asses yet, I'm so sorry. Is this a slow burn now? Does it count as a slow burn if they bang at the beginning?
> 
> Answers in the comments plz.
> 
> I also just realised I haven't mentioned Todd having tattoos even once D: so apparently he just doesn't have them in this fic. Dammit! I'm just going to have to draw him with them instead :')
> 
> Thanks for reading, commenting, kudos and any and all encouragement! I appreciate it more than I can say, and it keeps me writing!


	9. Don't Be Afraid To Make Mistakes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kurt deals with the consequences of repressing one's emotions and realises that the intersection between healing and comfort is complex.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, look! Two chapters in one weekend! :O
> 
> Only two more to go! Say whaaaaaaat???
> 
> I also apparently decided there wasn't enough angst in this fic so here's some sad!Kurt I guess. 
> 
> TW: flashbacks/panic attacks, masturbation

Kurt woke up to cool fabric fluttering shut over his nostrils, briefly cutting off his air supply. He started and pulled back an inch, away from the cotton blocking his nose. His neck hurt. Everything ached, just a little, like he’d lain on the same side all night without moving. The cool, firm surface under his cheek shifted slightly and he realised it was a leg. Of course.

For a long moment, he held still, almost afraid to breathe. Finally, he rolled to lie on his back, knees bent up and head still pillowed on those convenient, denim-clad thighs. Pale yellow sunlight filtered in through the thin curtains, pooling on the floor like liquid. He had no idea what time it was. Golden eyes traced the line of his couchmate’s body up from where a small patch of wet showed that Kurt had – embarrassingly – drooled on Todd’s shirt in his sleep. His gaze followed up the gently rising and falling chest, the sharp jut of a collarbone, the dark markings on a pale throat bared under a tipped-back head. Once again he was struck by how different Todd’s body looked when he was asleep, how his flexible spine curled out from its defensive hunch into something approaching relaxation; how those taut shoulders loosened. Even his skin looked less tense.

Still sleepy, Kurt let his mind wander to the taste of that smooth flesh, the feeling of it under sharp teeth. His heart thudded heavily in his chest and he bit down on the tip of his tongue, trying to ground himself before his mind wandered too far. He was always horny in the morning. But this close to the other man, he was enveloped in the flat, green smell of his skin, the coolness of his body, and he couldn’t stop the slow, lazy flips in his belly, couldn’t ignore the pounding behind his ribs. He thought about how close he was to Todd’s skin, to where he’d left deep, purple bitemarks along vulnerable inner thighs three months before. How easy it would be to run his fingers up under the hem of that black t-shirt, scratch light trails into sensitive flesh. He could slide the fabric up, glide his tongue across too-smooth skin, trace the edges of those mottled patches. How easy to pop the button on his jeans, take him into his mouth and damn this fragile peace they’d built; feel webbed hands tangle in his hair, see black eyes widen as Todd came out of sleep and realised Kurt was nestled between his legs, swallowing him down right there. He shifted awkwardly, pants uncomfortably tight.

Right then it felt like it would be worth it, worth the dizzying anxiety and complication, worth snapping the gossamer strands of hope, just to feel Todd fall apart in his hands again, feel those fingers, that tongue, on his skin. He gave a quiet, shaking sigh and adjusted the lie of his pants to reduce the stifling pressure on his dick. God, had he ever wanted anyone this much? There must have been people, must have been partners he’d yearned for so badly it felt like he was clawing out of his own skin. But right then he couldn’t think of any. All he could think of was how Todd had sounded the first time Kurt bit him, that keening moan that rocketed through him like a drug. The racking cry he gave the moment Kurt dove down and took his dick into his mouth in one long slide. Christ, he wanted to make Todd make those sounds again.

 _Fuck_ … he bit his lip, dragged it between his teeth, imagining the needy press of Todd’s mouth on his, the eager hands clawing at his clothes like they’d personally offended him. Then a sharp canine snagged on tender skin and he blinked, sobering. Holy hell. He really _was_ a creep, lying here next to the guy and fantasising this hard about him. Hard enough to make him bite a hole in his own lip. Thank God Todd hadn’t woken up. If he’d noticed… Kurt’s erection wilted a little at the humiliating thought.

Icebergs. Confession. The cringing, ugly-wet sensation of whipped cream in his hair. He scowled at himself, trying to push away the thoughts of Todd in his bed, spread out and flushed with desire. Slowly, slowly, his body relaxed, the heat in his belly extinguishing under cool wakening. He wasn’t going to think of odd, smooth skin against his fur. He wasn’t.

He closed his eyes again rather than lie there staring at the underside of Todd’s chin, though not before noticing that that was strangely smooth too. It occurred to him that maybe Todd couldn’t grow a beard, didn’t have to deal with the daily ritual of scraping a thin blade over his skin. Perhaps that was a part of his mutation, too.

He frowned behind closed eyes, sighing quietly. He wanted to know. And not just that; he wanted to know _everything_ about Todd. When had this become so much? He’d been alright before, back when it was just him and occasionally a sporadic visitor from the Institute. He’d been okay, he’d dealt with it. But that wasn’t true, not really. He’d been staying afloat. Drifting. He’d been content, sort of. But sad. And then Todd had shown up like a bolt from the blue and thrown all of that carefully curated calm out of the window. He’d shown up, and he’d made him laugh. With Todd, he laughed like he hadn’t since he was just that stupid, self-obsessed teenager. He laughed like he hadn’t seen… like…

His eyes stung briefly and he lifted a hand to squeeze across them. His frown deepened, crumpled his face into lines of old grief. They hit hard sometimes, the stuttering, jagged shards of memory, battles lost and won, fights that should never have taken place. He blinked a couple of times, staring sightlessly at the paint-spattered ceiling. His heart sped up, for different reasons this time. Not now. Not _now_. He could fall apart under the weight of it later. Not here. But there it was; there _they_ were. The children, the ones he was supposed to protect, to keep safe. The ones he had failed. He’d tried. He’d tried so hard, kept going back and back and back until he couldn’t even stand, and. He. Hadn’t. Been. Enough.

His chest rose and fell in quick pants, eyes staring blindly into the past. His ears felt blocked, like he was underwater, with nothing but screaming memory to fill them. Why? Why now? He hadn’t done anything wrong, hadn’t _seen_ anything to trigger it. The day had barely even started. _Why_ was this hitting him _now_? He squeezed his eyes tightly shut and tried to count backward from a hundred, tried to focus on the here and now, the feeling of Todd’s cool body beside him, the frustratingly soft give of the couch cushions. The tickle of dust in his nose.

But it didn’t help. Not when _that_ could happen – could happen again, could happen at all, could happen to those kids, could be happening out there _right now_ somewhere and he’d be powerless to stop it, powerless like he had been that day, when all of his strength and all of his desperation hadn’t been enough.

How could the world keep on spinning when there was so much fierce cruelty in it? When there was so much fear?

Fuck it. Just fuck it. He rolled onto his side again, curling in on himself, and buried his face in Todd’s shirt again, harder than before, pressing into the firm plane of his stomach like he could hide there. He breathed in, and he shook.

‘Nn?’ a sleepy murmur came from above. ‘Dawg?’ A searching hand found his hair, running lightly through the dark strands. ‘You okay there, man?’

Kurt squeezed his eyes tightly shut and breathed slowly, raggedly. A subtle shake of his head was all it took for that webbed hand to sink deeper into his hair, card gentle fingers across his scalp, rub softly behind his ears.

A quiet, slow breath sighed out from between wide lips, and Kurt fell apart. He didn’t cry loudly, not anymore. Voiceless, he gasped in breaths like they were tearing down his throat, heaved quiet, choking sobs full of cut-off whimpers that never quite made it past the block in his throat. He hadn’t been fast enough. He hadn’t been quick, or clever or brave enough and he hadn’t been able to stop it. And yes, maybe some small, rational part of his brain knew that, logically, it hadn’t been his fault, he’d done his best, the rest of him reeled with guilt, drunk on it. He had never known how much desperate regret could be held in a single body. Even after his parents’ house had been burned down in an attempt to kill the demon inside it he hadn’t felt like this. It had been a shade of what was to come. And yes, he was bigger now, but there was no body big enough to hold the weight of this crushing, blank numbness, this wet, burning shame. He hadn’t been enough.

His tail wound tightly around a bare, pale ankle, but Todd didn’t complain.

Todd didn’t speak, didn’t tell him ‘shh’ or ‘don’t cry’, didn’t say those hollow words: ‘it’s okay’. Because he’d seen too. He knew. It wasn’t okay. It would never be okay. Instead, that gentle hand curled through his hair, rubbed down the back of his neck, dug a blunt thumb into shoulders like iron. And he let Kurt pant like a racehorse, let him cry, let him soak through the thin cotton of his shirt until it was wet against his skin, until Kurt’s fur was matted with it.

‘I’m sorry,’ Kurt gasped between sobs. ‘I’m so sorry. This isn’t…’

‘Hey,’ Todd said slowly, calmly. ‘It’s fine. You’re fine. I’m here, yo.’

Kurt bit back another wave of apologies and shook in Todd’s lap like a child, one hand squeezing and releasing against his own thigh, trying to self-soothe, to bring himself down. It wasn’t right to put this on Todd – he had his own problems, he’d seen things too – he shouldn’t have to look after Kurt like he was-

A second, previously unoccupied, hand tangled with his, five webbed fingers awkward around three overlarge ones, but it held on tightly, squeezing like Todd didn’t plan on ever letting go.

Kurt took in a deep, shuddering breath, squeezing back just as hard. Todd’s grip tightened further, grounding, _present_. Kurt breathed in again – counted slowly – exhaled explosively. He bore down on himself, tensing every muscle in his abdomen until his breathing stopped shaking, until the tears stopped coming.

‘I am sorry,’ he said. It sounded weak and pathetic to his ears. But Todd didn’t let go. The fingers in his hair spasmed, dug in momentarily and pulled him harder against that firm, cool stomach, holding him together so he wouldn’t fly apart.

‘Ain’t no sorry, dawg.’ Finally, Todd’s hands retreated, ran through his own hair as he tipped his head back, pushing brown strands out of his eyes. He laughed shakily. ‘Chances are you’ll see me go to pieces sometime. It happens.’ He glanced down. ‘Fair warning, yo, it’s fuckin’ freaky when I do it.’

Kurt pushed himself up to sit back on his heels, forcing his tail to unwind from its death grip on Todd’s ankle. It snaked in nervous loops behind him. ‘Vhy?’

Todd shook his head with a weak grin. ‘I don’t, uh… I don’t cry much, dawg. I kinda… just freeze. Think it’s a frog thing, or a carehome thing. I just go real still and quiet and kinda disappear. ‘pparently you can’t even tell I’m breathin’ sometimes.’ He gave Kurt a darting, vulnerable look that was quickly covered with a smirk. ‘So, uh, if I space out like that don’t freak out on me. And it’s prob’ly best not to touch me either. Least, not until I _do_ start cryin’. Then, you know, go nuts.’

‘I von’t freak out,’ Kurt promised seriously. He hesitated, then reached out to touch Todd’s shoulder. ‘Thank you.’

Todd shrugged awkwardly, retreating back behind that defensive hunch. ‘S’coo.’ He fumbled in his pocket for a moment before pulling out a crushed cardboard carton. ‘You wanna smoke?’

Kurt shook his head. ‘I don’t… I don’t think it is a good idea.’

Todd shrugged. ‘Suit yourself. I always need one after an episode, yo.’ He cleared his throat. ‘You, uh… you wanna talk about it?’

Kurt considered for a moment, finally withdrawing his hand. He hadn’t really been aware that he was just holding onto Todd’s shoulder that entire time. Eventually, he shook his head. ‘No. Thank you. I think… I think I just need…’ His stomach growled.

Todd smirked around the unlit cigarette in his mouth. ‘Yeah?’ He laughed. ‘I got what you need, dawg.’ He bounced up onto his feet and disappeared into the kitchen. A few seconds later, he re-entered, hopping over the back of the sofa to present a bag of assorted, half-stale pastries.

He disappeared again and Kurt heard the slam of the back door as he went out to smoke. He ran a hand through his hair, finger-combing out some of the tangles and trying to smooth it back down from where it had ruffled in his sleep. He scratched fingernails through the matted fur of his cheeks, trying to clean the salt out. Ugh. People without fur didn’t know how easy they had it.

Fuck… He really hadn’t meant for that to happen, hadn’t meant to go to pieces and leave Todd to pick them back up. It wasn’t fair to do that to people, especially not to someone who’d obviously been through as much as he had. Kurt resolutely didn’t think about the fact that he’d have done exactly the same were their roles switched. And he especially didn’t listen to the part of his mind that said he’d rather Todd fell apart where he could see and help rather than the other man being left alone to deal with it. Thinking about that would lead to the perfectly reasonable suggestion that Todd might feel the same way about _him_ , which was not a rabbit hole Kurt was willing to go down right then.

After a few minutes, Todd returned, and Kurt felt guiltily grateful that he’d hurried back. Everything felt somehow calmer with Todd sat beside him. It was harder to think of ‘what if’s when there was a definite presence.

‘You sure you don’t wanna talk about it, dawg?’

Kurt nodded, staring at the dusty wooden floor. It must have been freezing in here in the winter. ‘I think it will not help,’ he said quietly. ‘I think I would just cry again.’

‘Hey, you cry all you want, dude,’ Todd said with a hollow laugh. ‘Ain’t gonna wig me out.’

Kurt smiled, and he did look at him this time. ‘Thank you. You are a kind man, Todd.’

That familiar, vulnerable look lit across Todd’s face again, and this time he didn’t immediately chase it away. It was a look that hurt, one that touched some raw nerve deep in Kurt’s chest and made him want to reach across the gap between them to smooth it away.

Then Todd looked away, and they chewed in silence as the sunlight on the floor crept slowly closer to the windowsill. And all the while, Kurt thought.

He felt raw, cracked open, like an eggshell. He felt like he was treading on them too. He had for a long while.

This… whatever it was they were doing, it wasn’t working. Even now, while his whole body still felt weak and trembling from the force of that crushing guilt and hurt, he was hyperaware of every little brush of Todd’s arm against his, every slight touch of their fingers as they reached simultaneously for the bag of food. He felt like an addict being given tiny bumps, just enough to keep him wanting, keep him _needing_.

Just the sight of red irises glowing faintly, reflecting the light bouncing off the floor, felt like a jolt of electricity down his spine. He felt like he’d been living on the outside edge of his nerves, skating so close to the frayed endings that every movement felt like a shock. He needed space. Time. God, he needed to _think_.

How long had he been cutting himself off from the part that felt? How long had he been pushing away every emotion that thrummed in his veins in case it hurt him? He cared about the garden, yes, about the free pantry he’d built, he cared about what he was doing, but it wasn’t anything that touched him. If he lost the garden, he’d be sad but he could set up another one. Why was it so much harder to face up to the things that made him _feel_? The things that could hurt.

Thinking about it – ‘the day that rained fuckin’ fire’ as Todd had said – made him feel. It made him hot and cold and numb and made his head rush like it was going to explode, or collapse in on itself. It made him feel so much he could barely breathe, could hardly _think_. And sometimes it made him feel nothing at all. He could look at the memories as though they were someone else’s, like he was just a tourist sifting through. He could look at them and condemn himself for not being strong enough, see where he’d made fatal mistakes (where he should have known better) or sometimes, just sometimes, feel a glimmer of compassion. He’d done his best, stretched himself to the limits of his ability. Surely that had to count for something? In the eyes of God, yes. In his own? Not so much. He _should_ have been better, should have been able to save everyone.

It was stupid. He knew that. Forgiveness was something only he could give himself, something that he tried hard to cultivate. But that didn’t stop the blame from coming in waves in those dark moments where the past swallowed the world. Anything less would have felt like escaping his own just punishment.

 _Stop._ He let his eyes flutter closed, took another bite of the dandelion and honey pastry in his hands. He rolled it around in his mouth, savouring every crumb of sweetness. He wasn’t there. He was here. Here in Todd’s living room, in a freshly painted house gone wild with colour, on a sunny morning in spring. He was eating pastry and sitting beside a man with webbed hands and strange skin and a foul mouth who made him feel like, somehow, he didn’t need to be forgiven. Like he was fine as he was. Like it was okay to be silly, to make stupid jokes and be angry and break down and laugh and just _exist_.

Whom he wanted so much he felt like it was tearing out through his skin, clawing up his throat. He wanted Todd so badly it scared him. What was he so afraid of?

-

After they’d eaten, Kurt mumbled some vague excuse to head home. It must have been too vague, because Todd glanced up sharply, black eyes piercing.

‘You gonna be okay?’

Kurt nodded, shrugged.

‘You ain’t gonna… uh.’ Todd fumbled for a moment. Realisation dawned.

Kurt’s eyes widened and he shook his head, lifting his hands in a gesture of appeasement. ‘No, no, absolutely no. I vill be _fine_ ,’ he insisted. ‘I just need to… get some space for my head. Headspace.’

Todd eyed him warily, mouth curled in suspicion. ‘Okay. Don’t do anything stupid.’

Kurt laughed more heartily than he felt and gently punched Todd’s shoulder. ‘I’m not the stupid one.’

‘Says the asshole who forgot he was covered in _fur_ when he sprayed cream all over my fuckin’ hand.’ Todd rolled his eyes. ‘Talk about writing checks your ass can’t cash, yo.’

‘Hey, I dealt vith it!’ Kurt protested. ‘I only complained _once_.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ But Todd was smiling now. ‘Go on, get. I got shit to do.’

Golden eyes met black. ‘I will see you soon.’

‘Sure.’

-

Kurt stood blankly in his room when he got home, gazing around through the fading purple smoke like he’d never seen it before. What had he done with his time before he started hanging out with Todd? He’d made a free pantry, put food in it. Sometimes other people did too. He’d never forgotten the excited little rush the first time he saw a reused takeout box in there with a label written in someone else’s hand. He hadn’t taken it. Let someone who needed it more have it. But it had been a good feeling.

Eventually, he decided to cook something. If he decided he wasn’t hungry, he could eat it later. Or put it in the pantry for someone else.

It was nothing fancy, just fried rice with a bunch of odds and ends that needed eating stirred up into it. The monotonous, mundane task steadied him, grounded him in the present. He thought about the morning with increasing distance as he chopped the odds and ends of leftover vegetables into the frying pan. Sometimes there really was no telling when something like that would be triggered in him. It just… surged up sometimes, spilled over like an overflowing bucket. Then the water level stabilised and he was left shaky but alive. Ripples chasing across the surface, not quite enough to push him over the edge again. He didn’t really know how to think about it. How could you tackle something head-on that slid away from your mind’s grasp whenever you were level enough to face it? How could you negotiate with trauma that hid behind corners and leapt out from sunlit mornings full of peace like it had made its home there? It was like fencing with a shadow.

He’d had some therapy, back when everything was still fresh, he knew the names for what he was going through: flashbacks, panic attacks, anxiety, PTSD. He knew the ways he should deal with it, and mostly he succeeded. He’d found some peace in mindfulness, in the beauty of a peaceful present. In the dewdrop diamonds on spiderwebs in the grass. It had been a long time since he’d broken down like he had that morning. Why now?

As the sun peeked around the edge of the windowframe and illuminated the tips of his fur in golden light, he realised three things simultaneously: the rice was burning onto the bottom of the pan; he’d spent so much of the last month trying to ignore his feelings about Todd that he’d started to ignore other important things like the warning signals that preceded a breakdown if he didn’t take a rest, and that against all the odds, he was still hungry. He piled half of the food onto a plate and took it with him to go and sit in the empty bathtub, among his germinating seeds.

What was he doing? He pondered as he ate, gazing right through the small tray of radish seedlings on the cistern and out to somewhere in the landscape of his own mind.

When he thought about it, it made sense, at least on paper. He’d been trying so hard to ignore just how attractive the curl of Todd’s wide mouth was when he smiled that he’d started to ignore other beautiful things around him too. His attention was so absorbed in pushing away the little flutters of emotion that crept across his skin like sparks whenever Todd touched him that he’d stopped paying attention to anything else. He was pretending that if he didn’t look at the way he felt about Todd, it couldn’t hurt him. Was it worth it?

Why had it been so important that he and Todd stop fucking? Or… not re-start fucking. Why had they decided to bury those feelings and get along as friends? Was it really better this way, when so much of the time they could barely look each other in the eye? When things happened like last night, like the hooking catch of eyes meeting, the press of a firm body sending shivery heat flooding through every nerve? Kurt _knew_ that if he’d let himself break that barrier, had kissed Todd, the smaller man would have let him, would have pushed him harder against the wall, surged up and kissed him with lips and teeth and tongue like fire leaping down his throat.

Just the thought of it… He frowned at where his semi-hard dick was pressing up against his pants, a demanding tent of fabric and flesh. He sighed and tipped his head back against the tiled wall. What were they _doing_? What did he _want_?

Well, the answer to that was pretty clear: he wanted Todd. He wanted sleepless black eyes and pale, rubbery skin like dappled shade. He wanted webbed hands and cool flesh and long brown hair that tangled in his fingers and got painfully caught up in stubborn hairties and made Todd swear like a sailor. He wanted that flat, green, earthy scent in his nostrils when he woke up. He wanted to swallow the noises Todd made when Kurt…

The clink of a fork set down. A furred hand ghosted over the shape under his pants. He hissed in a breath between his teeth. How many times had he done this now, touched himself to thoughts – memories – of Todd’s wide mouth and arched spine? How many times had he made himself come with Todd’s pleading cries ringing in his ears? How many times had he pretended he hadn’t, that it was a flyaway thought? How many times had he told himself it was the last time?

He suddenly wanted to laugh. What were they doing? Why were they dancing around the edges of this like they didn’t both know what it was? Kurt had always known he was a romantic, knew he dived too deep too quickly and wound up hurt. He built up expectations in his head, spun himself tales of soulmates and deep-heart connections, and always he let himself down. So now he was wary, reticent. But this wasn’t like that. He had no expectations. They’d had over a month to realign, to gather themselves; three since they’d had that dizzying – stupid – hot – encounter in a bar, on a rooftop, in Kurt’s bed. If this was going to go away, it would have ebbed by now. But right there, three months later, sat in his crowded, dirty bathroom, Kurt still couldn’t think of anything in the world he would rather be doing than sucking Todd Tolensky’s dick.

God, he wanted to do so many things with him. The best part was that only roughly half of them involved sex. Maybe a bit more than half. But there was a lot more he wanted. Like waking up in the morning with dappled skin pressing his fur the wrong way, awkward and uncomfortable but _real_. He wanted to hear Todd swear at him in a hundred different ways after a hundred different pranks and stupid jokes, see him swim in a real lake like he was meant to. God, he wanted to share a fucking _bath_ with him.

And now Kurt _did_ laugh, burying his face in his hands and snickering like he’d just discovered the world’s greatest joke and it was him. He’d been such an idiot. But so had Todd, and maybe that meant something. If Todd could still look at Kurt after the last month and want him despite – maybe even because of – all of the silly things the elf had done to goad him, then… maybe this was something worth risking heartache for.

Kurt sobered, and leaned back against the tile again. That was that, then. He had – for God’s sake, he had to be able to admit it to himself if he had any hope of admitting it to Todd – he had a painful, ridiculous, embarrassing crush on the Toad. On Todd. He liked him. God, he liked him so _much_. He giggled nervously, hating himself for it. Fuck. He was halfway to head over heels for a guy he’d fought with for _years_ at school. And he was going to tell him so. And if Todd would let him, he was going to suck the guy’s brain out through his dick.

Like just thinking the words gave him permission, he set his still half-full plate aside, wriggled his pants down past his hips and took himself in hand. Squeezing his eyes shut, he let his mind run wild, thinking about that first evening, the slow buildup of tension in the bar, the long hours of talking and messing around, flirting. The dancing around what was happening between them. He thought about how badly he’d wanted to kiss Todd on the roof, how long he’d held back, unsure of himself and of Todd.

His grip tightened as he thought of the quick, sharp intake of breath when their lips met. And God, the way Todd’s whole body had shuddered, whether with desire or relief or something else, the way he’d opened his mouth against Kurt’s and clawed at him like… like he was something he’d wanted for so long it didn’t even bear thinking about.

Kurt paused, hand pumping slowly, almost stilling. What if Todd decided it was too much? What if he decided that it had been too long? What if he said no?

Kurt’s heart pounded in his chest, stomach dropping. What if Todd genuinely wanted to get over him and didn’t welcome an advance that came years too late? What if he’d freaked him out this morning, shown too much?

But then the memory of last night, of those eyes staring up challengingly at him like they were just _daring_ him to make a move, fluttered across the screen of his mind, and Kurt closed his eyes again. If he’d only leaned in, just an inch. He was so sure. Todd would have taken the open invitation and surged up to meet him, would have closed the gap between them as eagerly as the first time, all wide lips and sinful tongue. _God_ , his tongue. Kurt remembered vividly the way Todd had curled it around him, had swirled it around every inch of his cock, sucking and _writhing_ , so hot he’d thought he might die from it.

His hand tightened around his dick again, picking up speed. Thick fingers played with his foreskin, sliding it up and down, twisting slightly near the top. He feathered the fingers of his other hand over the tip before raising them to his lips and coating them liberally with his own saliva. They slipped between his legs at an awkward angle, ran down the seam between his balls and further back, pressing gently at his entrance. Fuck, he wanted to know what Todd would feel like _there_ , how it would feel to have those strong hands firm on his hips, pulling him back as the head of the smaller man’s dick breached him. The sounds that would spill out of that wide mouth as he slid inside and filled him.

He pressed a finger slowly, incrementally, inside himself and pulsed it, seeking out the sensitive bundle of nerves a few inches in. With a subtle shift in the angle of his shoulder, he found it and gasped, the breath fluttering in his chest. His other hand alternated between slow, deep strokes and quick, staccato ones, losing his rhythm as he rubbed his prostate. This wasn’t the first time he’d thought about it, but it was the first time he didn’t try not to. He wanted Todd to fuck him senseless, wanted to be spread out and taken like a staked claim, wanted to feel Todd’s teeth on the back of his neck as those slim hips pistoned into him, filling him with every thrust. It had been a long while since he’d been fucked. His cock throbbed at the thought.

He got himself so close he could taste it, could barely hold himself back from the shivering edge, before he made himself let go. A few heartbeats passed, and he _ground_ his finger up into himself, sending sparking pleasure out from his core. Then he gripped himself again and continued.

Behind closed eyes, he saw Todd’s black eyes, hazy with lust, saw dappled skin flushed a subtle pink, dark bitemarks peppering pale flesh. His breath came ragged in his chest and he tried to stop again, to edge himself just that little bit further, but then he thought of Todd’s tearing voice and the way it had cried out his name, heard the almost-pained keen the other man had given as he came, and that was it.

Kurt’s head tipped back against the tile, body lurching as he came over his own hand in pulses and spurts, white dribbling down the seams between his fingers.

‘Todd… Todd, fuck, _Todd_ ,’ he moaned, and it felt so good to say it, to let himself fall fully into the feeling of how badly he wanted his friend. It felt good to finally admit it, to stop hiding from himself.

He lay there for a little while, until his breathing evened out again and he felt stable enough to kick off his pants, shakily rinse his hands off under the faucet and clean himself up. The bathtub was convenient for some things, at least.

Once he was done, he staggered out of the bathroom and collapsed onto his bed, staring up at the ceiling. How the fuck was he going to talk to Todd about this?

Should he ask to talk? Just tell him straight up? Kiss him? Buy him flowers or something? Kurt groaned and covered his eyes. Definitely not the last one. He could just see how that would go, and yeah maybe it would be fun for Todd to have a laugh at his expense, but Kurt didn’t want to turn him putting his heart on the line into a joke.

This was going to take some thinking about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it still self-restraint when you realise it was unnecessary?  
> Thank you for reading!!
> 
> Just FYI, once this fic is finished and has been up for 2 weeks I'm going to remove TW from individual chapters and put them directly in the tags/summary for the fic itself so there are fewer time-specific spoilers.


	10. Do Not Despair: You Are Not Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes the world throws you curveballs. Kurt learns that living is a team effort, and that sometimes all you need is a good hug.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I say 11 chapters? Turns out I lied, it's 12 now. Ha! Take that!  
> I am the unreliable narrator of my own life.  
> Enjoy!
> 
> TW: violent statement of bigotry, referencing the Holocaust.

It did take some thinking about. In fact, it took so much thinking that Kurt steadfastly avoided Todd for almost a week. Because he was thinking. He wasn’t just hideously nervous and freaking out, no. Not at all.

He didn’t spend the whole week in his apartment, at least. After the episode at Todd’s house, he avoided going outside for the first day or two, giving himself some much-needed time and space to recalibrate, to make room for the obvious fact that he was nowhere near as recovered as he’d thought. He wasn’t fine. He was functional. But it had become abruptly apparent that those were not the same thing, and he wanted to make sure he wasn’t going to just dive straight back into an uncomfortable peace treaty with his own brain again. Peace was what he wanted, but not like that. He didn’t want it to be an uneasy truce with a lurking enemy. He wanted to be on the same side as himself. One person, even if it hurt.

After all, you can’t say you don’t believe in borders and still put them up inside your own mind, fencing out the parts you don’t like just because they’re inconvenient. He smiled when he thought that, cupping his hands around a hot mug of tea made from last summer’s dandelions and dried mint and gathered rose petals. He gazed out of his window, out over the scraggly lawns of the suburbs. A few of them had sprouted planters over the last month as people started to think of the sowing season and the joys of fresh food. It was nice, seeing the slow tide change as more people realised that they didn’t need some magical ‘green thumb’ to grow their own food.

After the first couple of days – split fairly equally between agonising over how to tell Todd he wanted a less platonic kind of relationship; worrying about whether he really ought to rock the boat; frantically masturbating in an attempt to think with an un-horny brain, and facing the fact that his self-care and self-soothing routines were woefully subpar – he spat himself out into the street and wandered the sidewalks _away_ from the garden.

He strode out past old houses and burned-out shells, chasing his tail around blocks with tattered flags of all shades tied to the windows, walking in circles and taking random lefts and rights to try to capture the feeling of twistier roads, streets that curved around towns built up organically from the ground, rather than laid out in deliberate, careful grids. Sometimes it hit him strangely, even now, the way that American cities looked so vast and endless, just because one could see for miles in a straight line. Sometimes he missed the subtle trickeries of European architecture, the crooked streets that never led quite where one expected. In some way, a part of him had always thought he would return home one day.

Now he probably never would.

It was a melancholy thought, one that drove a little shard of pain into his heart. But it was an old pain, familiar. It didn’t come screaming out of a sunny morning like a flaming streak from a catapult. It wasn’t a force laying siege, just a missed step. A jarring little impact that was easily laid aside.

The walk did him good, to his surprise. He returned home long after dark, and when he laid down in his bed, he fell asleep quickly and didn’t dream.

He went out again the next day, ‘porting out to where he’d left off and continuing further out from the city. After a few hours, he finally started to reach the dwindling, ragged edges of suburbia, where the houses began to shrink away from each other, peeking out from behind swathes of open meadow and woodland. He didn’t stop there, cheating sometimes and skipping hundreds of yards at a time (though more often he just walked) until he was surrounded by bare, green-misted fields. It was hard to tell at a glance what was growing, this early in the year. It didn’t matter. It was monoculture, so it wouldn’t be growing in another five years. The soil was wasted, sucked dry by a century and more of leeching the same nutrients out of the same earth. It was barren, or would be.

He sank down into the shade of a tree for a while, and thought about home, about the mountains of Germany, and wondered briefly why he missed them so much at the moment, why he felt so stifled here. The answer only came when he got home and had to curl up under the dark shelter of the covers to keep the creeping panic from slamming back in. Europe was something to hold onto, a memory that demanded nothing from him.

But the problem with thinking about the past is that it tends to linger, and Kurt’s stomach twisted with guilt as his mind led him down, threading back through more mundane grievances, things he had not thought about before, like the way Todd had been treated like an invading force rather than a potential student when he went to the Institute, driven away by lightning and thunder and the threatening ‘snick’ of steel claws, left with no choice but to seek shelter under Mystique’s thumb at the Boarding House. Kurt had been given a home and a family. An image inducer. What had Todd been given?

It wasn’t his fault, but he could have done better anyway. It was easier to think that than about The Day, though he thought of that too, fierce and frightened and tearing.

The days spun by like a roulette wheel, leaving him reeling. A migraine, a hurried call from Rogue on the communal landline downstairs, another panic attack… Time felt like sand slipping through his fingers, like a broken hourglass. He just wished he could stop the creeping sense of dread about what might happen when it ran out.

Finally, on Friday, he resolved to visit the garden. If Todd was working – and he might be, his shift patterns were erratic to say the least – then he would garden alone and not have to face up to the challenge of telling his friend that actually, fuck what he’d said before, he desperately wanted to get in his pants again.

And if he was there, then… well. Kurt would have to do something about it. His stomach flipped unpleasantly, dizzying and disarming. God, how did you turn around and tell someone that actually, fuck getting over them, you wanted them to bend you over a table and fuck you senseless? And then, hopefully, date you for an unspecified length of time.

God. He’d seen Todd in love once before – twice, if you counted his complete obliviousness to Todd’s teen crush on him – and it had been _intense_. What if that hadn’t changed? He shivered pleasantly, trying to ignore the little voice that said that maybe that level of outrageous affection was exactly what he might need. But Todd wasn’t like that anymore, wasn’t the same guy he had been, and honestly that was a relief. Kurt was a lot more fragile than he had been – and admittedly, he’d been pretty fragile even then – and he wasn’t sure how he’d deal with a Wanda-level crush from the Toad. If Todd even liked him anymore.

Deliberately cutting his navel-gazing short, he ‘ported down to the front door and, out of habit, checked his mailbox. He never got any, but sometimes Kitty went through spates of writing to her distant friends because it made her feel like a Victorian lady.

There was an envelope in there when he unlocked it, to his surprise, and he pulled it out to stare blankly at it. But there was no friendly, swirly handwriting on the grey, recycled paper. Just his name and address, printed blankly, impersonally, across it. Frowning, he ripped it open and unfolded the letter, leaning against the handrail at the foot of the stairs to read it.

The words took a moment to hit.

 _Eviction Notice_.

Nothing registered for a moment, just blank incomprehension, and then all he could think was _holy_ _shit_. Holy shit. His knees wobbled a little and he sank down to sit at the foot of the stairs. His mind raced. One week? How could they give him a fucking week’s notice? A month. It had to be a month, right? It was always a month. Had it said a week in the contract? Had there even been a contract? He couldn’t think, couldn’t remember. It was so long ago – he’d been living there for over a year. He’d lost all the paperwork six months in in an overenthusiastic cleaning spree. A goddamn _week_? He checked the date on it and hissed a sharp breath in through his teeth, sucking hard on his tongue.

Two days. He had _two days_. Surely the landlord wouldn’t kick him out straight out if he didn’t have anywhere to go? Who even _was_ the landlord? The whirl of moving out from the Institute a second time and hopping between places until he found this one was dim and murky, swaddled in the suffocating layers of depression and shock and misery that had driven him. He knew he’d never met anyone at the agency, had arrived late at night and had to pick up the key from a lockbox. Who the hell was he supposed to contact in this situation? He checked over the letter and found a phone number listed at the bottom, under an illegible squiggle.

With a deep breath that hissed back out through pursed lips, he steeled himself and pulled himself up to standing before going to the communal phone and calling the number.

-

When Kurt finally hung up the phone, it was with hands that trembled, shaking from holding back the spitting rage that paved over the deep well of fear blooming in his chest. Holy shit. Holy _shit._ He bit sharply down onto his tongue and tasted blood. Fuck. He sucked in a breath and let it out explosively, trying to bypass the tight rumble in his throat. Another deep breath was chased back out by the harsh tapping of a tongue against a hard palate as he clamped down with an iron grip on the urge to let that chittering growl roll out. It was an old habit, born of years of trying to appear as human as possible. Kurt had never wanted to be seen as anything other than human. But right then, maybe he didn’t care. It wasn’t exactly like he could fuck his chances up here any more than they already were.

But the old lady whose door was right next to the telephone was sweet and had a heart problem, and Kurt didn’t want to risk terrifying her if she came out unexpectedly. He should go upstairs, go to his little apartment and have his freakout. And then start packing it down. Sorting through stuff. He should.

Instead, he crushed the eviction notice in one hand and stormed out of the front door. He needed to be gone, out of here. Packing could wait. And fuck that slimy asshole down the phone, if he wasn’t ready to leave when they came to check the apartment, he wasn’t going fucking _anywhere._

But on his way out of the door, he stopped in his tracks. Stared blankly.

There outside his apartment block, where yesterday there had been a shoddily built, brightly painted and _friendly_ free pantry, there was a mangled mess of torn wood. He stood stock still in the doorway, crumpled letter in hand, gazing numbly at the wreckage of his hard work, his good faith. He clenched and unclenched his free hand, working his jaw, until the slowly-closing safety door bumped him on the ass and forced him forward.

‘What the fuck…’ he breathed, staring at the tangled mess of wood. Who would do something like that? He took a hesitant step forward, then another. When he reached the sidewalk, he saw the spraypaint and felt sick, dizzy.

_Mutie freaks get gassed._

He stood silently for a long while, breathing so slowly and shallowly that he could have been a statue. His eyes stung for a moment before he steeled himself. He would not give them the satisfaction of crying over this, not out here where they could see. Because they must live nearby. They had to, if they knew who had set it up, who’d been stocking it half the time. The lovingly canned fruit someone had put in yesterday was smeared across the road, glass shattered under the wheels of a marauding car. The Tupperware he’d added last night had burst, spilling its contents out over the asphalt like bloody vomit.

They hadn’t even bothered to take the food. What a fucking waste. That was all Kurt could think for a few minutes: what a waste of food. Then he set his jaw and got to work.

It took him almost half an hour to clear up the twisted slats and splinters, to prop them neatly to one side for burning later. It took another half hour to clear up the broken glass and shards of plastic littering the ground. Most people didn’t walk around in bare feet, but it didn’t feel right to leave them. People still had pets, after all.

When he was done, he didn’t even go home to wash his hands. The eviction notice, the disastrous call with his landlord’s agency, the _two fucking days_ to move out, all that sucked, but this somehow hit even harder. It was harsh and miserable and cruel and made him want to lash out and hit something.

So, unconsciously, he did what he always used to do when he felt like that. He went to find Todd.

-

The house was empty. Kurt hammered on the door for almost a minute before remembering through the haze that he could just ‘port inside. He didn’t have to, as it turned out.

‘He’s at work,’ a familiar voice called. Marta was taking her paper trash out to her burning pile.

Under other circumstances, Kurt would have gone over to say hi, maybe have a cup of tea with her and Amy, if Amy wasn’t at the school group, but right then all he wanted was to find Todd. Everything else could wait.

‘Thank you,’ he called. ‘Sorry, I have- I need-’

She flapped a hand at him. ‘Go on, go find him. You can tell me about it later.’

He nodded gratefully and turned in the direction of the garage, orientating himself before ‘porting away.

The garage looked much the same as it had the day he and Todd came to pick up Todd’s truck. Kurt hadn’t been back since, not for any particular reason other than Todd usually met him at the garden, or the house.

He hesitated briefly outside. Maybe this wasn’t okay. But then he saw Todd leaning out from under a truck to scrabble for a tool just out of reach, in his greasy jumpsuit, his brown hair dirty and tied messily back out of his eyes, and his quickly-formed uncertainty snapped.

‘Todd.’ It started out as a shout but he cut it off after the first tongue-snapped consonant and swallowed the rest of the sound. Not here. That wasn’t his name here. 'Mortimer!’ he called out, hovering just inside the big doorway. Todd didn’t hear him. ‘Mortimer!’ he tried again, louder, but the amphibious mutant was already starting to lean back in under the truck.

The woman he’d seen Todd laughing with back when they’d come to get the truck – Kat – heard, however. She rolled out from under a red convertible on a wheeled tray, grinning rogueishly and covered with gritty oil. She winked at Kurt before diving under the truck beside Todd and hollering loudly enough that Kurt’s ears slid back,

‘MORT!’

Todd jumped visibly and hit his head on the wheel arch. Rubbing it, he turned to scowl at Kat, angrily saying something that got cut off by the sound of an angle grinder from the other end of the workshop.

Then – oh – then Todd looked around with dark grease smeared across his face and a sudden, surprised grin, and Kurt caught a momentary glimpse of something in those open, black eyes and deep smile that made his chest expand with hope before whatever it was was carefully hidden and the other man hopped over.

‘Fuzzy! What you doin’ here, man?’ He didn’t sound upset.

Kurt hesitated, suddenly unsure. What did he want? He hadn’t really thought that far. All that had been in his head was seeing Todd. He awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck, smoothing the ruffled fur back down.

‘Um. When do you get off?’ he asked.

‘An hour,’ the other man replied. ‘Why, you wanna grab a beer or somethin’?’

Kurt nodded emphatically. Yes, yes that was exactly what he wanted to do. ‘That vould be great.’

‘Okay. You gonna wait around or head out and come back?’

Kurt didn’t think that staying was the right answer, but he couldn’t help the way everything felt clearer, calmer, just from seeing the other man. The wrenching, churning turmoil in his abdomen was pushed aside by the habitual fluttering that erupted whenever Todd was around.

‘Is it okay to vait?’

Todd was apparently unfazed by the request. ‘Yeah, sure. I can’t hang out but there’s a vending machine in the office, go grab a coffee or somethin’ an’ I’ll grab you when I’m done.’ He paused, eyes searching Kurt’s face. ‘Hey. You okay, dawg?’

Kurt smiled shakily. ‘I, um. Not… really? How could you tell?’

Todd barked out a short laugh. ‘Your fur’s all fluffed up, man.’ He squinted at him briefly. ‘And you’re doin’ that weird, pinchy mouth thing you do when you’re pissed.’

Kurt laughed properly this time, if still a bit weakly. The mortifying ordeal of being known was… actually kind of tender, as it turned out. ‘I’ve, uh, had some… not.’ He stuttered. ‘Not great news. Can we talk about it later?’

Todd gave him a sympathetic look and patted his shoulder. ‘Sure thing, dawg. I’d offer a hug but, uhh.’ He gestured toward himself, taking in the grease and metal shavings smeared across his jumpsuit.

‘I’ll take an IOU,’ Kurt said with a small smile.

Todd’s irises warmed with a slight brightening before he nodded, and Kurt hoped it meant what he thought it did rather than that the shorter man was pissed. ‘Well make sure I pay up, yeah?’ He grinned widely before turning and hopping back to the truck he was working on. It was a different smile than he’d had when Kurt first arrived, like he was going for friendly but got tangled up in ‘guarded’ somewhere along the way. Kurt let out a quiet, huffed sigh, watching the lines of Todd’s shoulders as the greener man bent to pick up his tools again. The world really was throwing hands at the moment. He just hoped he somehow caught some of the punches before they landed.

-

He’d been sat in the office for less than ten minutes before Kat came in and plopped herself down in the tired old office chair in front of the desk. She shuffled some pieces of paper around before apparently finding what she was looking for and scribbling on it.

Kurt tried not to watch.

‘So.’ She flung down the paper and leaned back in the chair with a squeal of metal. It tipped almost far enough for her to fall out of it, but she somehow managed to look comfortable anyway. She eyed him, eyes a startling blue under a shock of dirty blonde hair. ‘You’re Kurt, huh?’

Kurt flushed under his fur and awkwardly tried to meet her gaze. ‘Uh, yes,’ he said quietly, ducking his head. ‘How did- oh. Does… does Mortimer talk about me at vork?’ It was mostly curiosity – how had she known his name? – but Kurt was honest enough with himself to admit that there was a hint of wanting, too. He wanted to be important to Todd.

Kat didn’t miss it. She grinned almost as broadly as Todd, which was saying something for someone without that wide mouth to back it up. ‘Dude, he pretends like he doesn’t, but he never fuckin’ shuts up about you.’ She spun the chair to face him, still leaning back at that dangerous-looking angle, her safety-booted feet crowding up onto it with her. ‘You’re, like, his fake-not-boyfriend, right?’

‘Fake… not-boyfriend?’ Kurt asked, mystified.

‘Mm.’ She chewed on the end of her pen, looking at him like she was weighing him up. ‘Like, you’re banging and being all domestic and cute and shit but not saying you’re boyfriends because one or both of you have commitment issues, etcetera, etcetera.’

‘Uhh…’ Kurt blushed hot to the roots of his hair and silently thanked God for his fur. ‘I… no? No, ve aren’t… ve aren’t _banging_. We, uh…’

‘ _Ohh_ that’s the problem. Okay, gotcha.’ She shot him a finger gun and spun back to the desk, coming out of her awkward lean and rifling through papers again. ‘Thus the pining.’

‘Vhat?’ Kurt spluttered. Now even his _ears_ felt hot. His hands tightened around the chipped mug of watery hot chocolate he’d gotten from the machine. Coffee had seemed a bit ambitious given how shaken up he was already. ‘I am _not_ pining!’

‘Well _he_ is,’ Kat said bluntly, pointing at Todd through the glass window to the workshop. He was arguing with another mechanic, gesticulating wildly. It was so familiar, the way his expressive face revealed every thought before he said it, the movement of his hands and too-flexible shoulders.

‘He doesn’t look like he’s pining,’ Kurt said with a mischievous grin. ‘He looks pissed.’ And he did. He looked just how Kurt remembered him just before they leapt for each other’s throats behind the bleachers. He’d never thought those would be funny, fond memories one day. How strange.

‘Well duh, even Mort can feel more than one thing at a time, dude. Trust me, he’s been like a bear with a sore head for weeks. Shoulda guessed he wasn’t getting any; that was dumb.’ She glanced back out at the two arguing mechanics. ‘Shoulda seen how he came in the day after you two went out in the truck. I didn’t think he could _smile_ like that, y’know? Looked like his face was breaking.’

‘He smiles a lot,’ Kurt protested, ears sliding back slightly.

‘Psh, yeah, but not like that, dude. Y’know when he bailed, I told Dad he’d probably run off with you. Eloped or something. Stupid, right?’

Kurt wasn’t sure how to answer that. ‘Um. Yes? No. I mean-’

‘Gawd, he was right, you _are_ easy to fluster.’ She grinned at him.

‘I am _not!_ ’

She just grinned at him.

He sighed and blew his bangs up out of his face. ‘Okay, maybe I am a _little_. It has been a… trying day.’

‘Yeah?’ she looked at him sympathetically. ‘What’s up?’

‘Aren’t you supposed to be at work?’ he asked pointedly.

She shrugged. ‘Not much to do now. Day’s almost over. Not like my dad can fire me anyhow, I’m his ride in.’

‘He’s a mechanic and he doesn’t _drive_?’ That seemed somehow to flout the natural order.

‘Nah, he can, he just lost his licence. That’s what you get for driving home after a breakup booze-up.’

Huh. Everyone had stories. Sometimes Kurt needed reminding of that, on days like today. He was good at forgiveness, sometimes, when he worked hard at it. He was good at letting things go. But today had just been one too many problems piled up on each other. Even the agency asshole had a story. He forced himself to briefly consider the fact that whoever had trashed the free pantry had a story too. Ugh. It wasn’t one he wanted to know right now, however.

‘You okay there? Need another drink?’

His shoulders sagged and he gave her a weak smile. ‘No, nein. Danke. I… I guess it’s just been a really hard day. It vill pass. But I am allowed to feel bad today, ja?’

Kat smiled warmly and nodded. ‘Yeah. Sure, my dude.’ She rested her chin on her hand and glanced back out through the window to the workshop, where Todd was now manoeuvring a wheel back onto the truck he was working on. ‘You know, my dad’ll probably kill me if I don’t ask you this, so, uhh… you aren’t gonna run off with him tomorrow, are you? Cos if you do he should at least give us some warning.’

Kurt shook his head emphatically. ‘No, no, _nein_ , zat is definitely not happening.’ He paused. ‘He didn’t run away vith me last time, you know.’

‘Yeah, I know.’ Her tone was neutral, but Kurt could hear the tension in it. She’d worried about Todd while he’d been gone. While he’d just been so caught up in being angry and jilted, he hadn’t even thought the guy might be in danger. God. He really was still so self-centred.

‘I mean it, you know,’ Kat said, turning and resting her cheek on her hand to look directly at Kurt. ‘He don’t think he does, but he talks about you a _bunch_. You’re like the only person he ever talks about. You and that garden. And the old lady and her kid – Margaret?’

‘Marta and Amy,’ Kurt replied absently, most of his brainpower directed to controlling the giddy little gymnast in his belly.

‘Right. You guys sure spend a lot of time together, huh?’ She was probing, but Kurt didn’t mind. He probably would too, in her situation.

‘I guess so?’ He turned the mug in his hands and looked down into its murky depths before draining it. ‘We… we’ve known each other for a long time, I guess.’

‘Yeah, he said you were like, college buddies or something. High school. I dunno.’

‘Vell, ve hadn’t seen each other in a long while until recently.’ He carefully didn’t clarify. Much as Todd obviously trusted her, he didn’t want to risk telling more than he should. He didn’t know the story he was supposed to be sticking to, after all.

‘Yeah, he said you, like, showed up outside his house and started digging a garden and he nearly shat himself.’ She cackled. ‘I know he was tangled up in some gang shit way back when, if you’re worried about letting shit slip, by the way. I don’t ask. I don’t wanna know, really. Don’t know shit about you though, except what he’s told me.’

‘Vhat has he told you?’ He shielded a small smile behind his empty mug and pretended to finish its contents before setting it on the floor beside his foot.

‘We-ell…’ Kat pushed away from the desk and resumed her uncomfortable-looking backward lean. ‘He said he had a crush on you when you were teenagers, that he’d _told_ you that when you saw each other again and, okay, he didn’t _say_ you banged but it was, like, pretty obvious. You used to fight, like, all the time. And you were German. That’s about it. Except like, silly shit like “he did the fucking whipped cream trick on me while I was sleepin’!” and “God, he’s such a little shit” and “he lost his shit over a fuckin’ _lettuce_ ”. Then he does that dopey grin he does when he thinks no one’s looking.’ Her nasal, angry impression of Todd was _awful_. Razzie-worthy. But the words made him smile nonetheless as his heart leapt in his chest.

God, he was fucked. He was in so deep he could hardly even see the surface anymore. A little thrill ran through him at the thought that maybe, just maybe, it might still be mutual. Kat obviously seemed to think so, and she was the closest thing Todd had to a friend outside of whatever it was he and Kurt shared.

‘Yo, what you been tellin’ him?’ a familiar voice demanded suspiciously, and Kurt looked up to see the man himself hanging in the doorway with a well-worn scowl on his face. Right now, it was directed at Kat.

‘Oh nothing,’ Kat said with a mischievous smirk.

‘Are there things she should not have told me?’ Kurt asked, biting back a matching grin.

‘Dude, what did you tell him?’ Something approaching mortified panic crossed Todd’s face and Kat threw back her head with a laugh.

‘Seriously, Mort. Nothing. But I _did_ get some juicy high school dirt on you from _him_.’

‘What?’ Todd yelped, staring at Kurt in frank betrayal. ‘ _Dawg.’_

Kurt raised his hands. ‘I told her nothing. She speaks lies!’

Todd glanced suspiciously between the two of them before throwing his hands in the air in disgust and stalking away like an insulted cat, muttering to himself.

Kurt caught Kat’s eyes and they both burst into peals of laughter. Apparently baiting Toad was one thing they had in common.

‘He’ll be changed in a sec,’ Kat said, glancing at the clock. ‘He’s _way_ too comfy here, dude. He thinks I won’t kick up a fuss if he tries to leave early because you’re here. Lucky for him, I’m not gonna disillusion him today.’ She scribbled on a few more sheets of paper before roughly shaking them into a pile and stacking them in a folder. ‘It was nice to meet you, Kurt.’

‘It vas good to meet you too, Kat.’ And he meant it. She’d managed to make him laugh on today of all days. That alone was enough, even without her obvious care for Todd. For Mortimer.

‘Leave the mug, I’ll wash it up when I do the closing checklist.’

‘Oh. Thank you.’ He leaned forward and set it down on the end of her desk.

‘Yooo, dawg, you ready?’ A holler came from the workshop and Kurt got to his feet with an apologetic smile.

‘Thank you for keeping me company.’

‘See you around, Kurt.’ Kat grinned and gave a jaunty little wave. ‘Have a drink for me.’

Kurt laughed, surprised. ‘I vill. Drive safe.’

Outside, Todd was already lighting up, his face pale and dappled and clean, hands reddened with oil and the harsh scrubbing it had taken to get it off. He was once again wrapped in his leather jacket and jeans, jumpsuit obviously stashed somewhere in the shop.

‘Still want that drink?’ he asked when Kurt approached, snatching his cigarette out of his mouth with deft fingers and blowing a stream of smoke into the still air.

Kurt nodded. ‘Yeah. Yes please.’

Todd stuck his cigarette back in his mouth and sucked in greedily. He probably hadn’t had a smoke break for a few hours. Kurt felt a vague, abstract worry about it, as he frequently did these days. An awareness of the fragility of mortality, the little thread that could snap as easily as a hair. He pushed it aside. They all had their unhealthy coping mechanisms. He tipped his head back and leaned on the wall of the garage, studying the slow-moving clouds while Todd quietly added to them. There were no answers there.

‘Ready?’ he asked when Todd had finished smoking. The shorter man nodded sharply and Kurt started reaching for his shoulder to ‘port them, before coming to a decision. Stepping in close, he murmured, ‘I’m going to take that IOU now,’ and wrapped his arms tight around Todd’s shoulders, tucking his face into the shorter man’s long brown hair with a sigh.

The other man said nothing. Strong arms slid around Kurt’s waist, steady and cool and grounding, and webbed hands pressed firmly against his back, pulling the lines of their bodies against one another. Something in Kurt softened, relaxed. Melted. It would be okay. He wasn’t alone anymore. They ‘ported.

The world swirled with heat and light and then suddenly they were outside the bar, wreathed in black and purple smoke. Kurt quickly let go of Todd’s shoulders, but those hard arms took another second to disentangle from around his waist and he wished abruptly that he’d held on just a moment longer. It was too late now.

They went in and sat down at the bar as they had on that first night, months ago. Kurt bought them both a beer while Todd shrugged out of his jacket, slinging it over the seat of his stool before settling onto it.

‘So,’ the greener man said after a long draught of his beer. ‘What’s up, Blue?’

Kurt wilted. His hands fidgeted with the beer bottle, peeling the homemade label off in strips. He took a sudden gulp of it and sighed. ‘Vell first I want to say sorry.’

‘Sorry?’ Todd looked mystified. ‘Why?’

‘I have not been a good friend recently.’

‘Dawg, you had shit to deal with. Figured I wouldn’t hear from you for a couple days.’ There was something off in the tone, though, something that hid behind the words.

Kurt sagged in his seat. ‘I should still have checked in. You vere vorried, before. And I did not say anything.’ He didn’t say _I disappeared for a week after you thought I might kill myself._ It hadn’t been intentional, yes, but it had not been kind either.

Todd shrugged awkwardly and took another sip of his beer, not looking at him. ‘It ain’t nothin’, dawg. You’re here now.’

‘You are a very patient man.’

Todd stared at him incredulously before raising his eyebrows and shaking his head. ‘Nah. I ain’t. I just get it, dawg.’

‘Vell that is still a kind of patience,’ Kurt insisted. ‘Anyway, that’s not…’ He sighed sharply and frowned, closing his eyes. ‘Someone destroyed the free pantry.’

‘Aw man, what? You were so proud of that thing.’ Granted, Todd had never seen it – or at least, Kurt assumed he hadn’t – but his care was touching.

‘They smashed it to pieces and left the food smeared across the road,’ he bit out, anger simmering in the quiet growl rippling through the words.

‘They didn’t even take the fuckin’ food? That’s fucked, man.’

‘And. Zey sprayed something- something awful across vhere it had been.’

‘Oh.’ Todd’s voice dropped, going flat and hard like slate. ‘Mutie haters?’

Kurt nodded, his eyes still closed, seeing that violent silver message tattooed across the backs of his eyelids. _Muties get gassed_. He seethed with it, felt the words like a brand across the inside of his skull. His stomach rolled.

‘You wanna tell me what it was?’

Kurt shook his head. ‘Nein. I do not want to have the words in my mouth.’ As though they weren’t scrawled large on the insides of his teeth from sucking on his rage anyway.

They sat in that wordless, simmering space for a few minutes, each lost in their own thoughts.

Then Kurt laughed, a harsh, unhappy sound. ‘That’s not even the worst of it.’

‘Why, what happened?’ Todd’s voice held a sharp edge in it, a knife glinting in the darkness. It wasn’t aimed at Kurt.

‘Nothing, not with the… not vith the vandals. Nothing like that. It’s…’ He couldn’t work his mouth around the words. Instead, he pulled the eviction notice out of his pocket and slapped it down on the bar in front of Todd. Webbed hands picked it up and unfolded it to read.

‘Huh.’

 _Huh_? That was all he had to say? It felt surprisingly… inadequate. Kurt ground his teeth.

‘The _bastard_ agency is kicking me out because they “are no longer retaining high-risk tenants”.’

Todd’s voice, when he spoke, was grim. ‘“High risk”. Fuckin’ hell.’ He laughed cruelly. ‘That’s a weird way of sayin’ “funny-lookin’ mutie freaks” ain’t it?’ But it wasn’t new, not surprising or shocking or unexpected. The ‘mutant question’ had been swathed in discussions of ‘risk management’ since the beginning. Like they were all walking time-bombs rather than just people trying to get by in a world that didn’t want them. It was astounding sometimes, the fact that people still found the time to care about mutants when the world itself was falling down around their ears. But most people couldn't do anything about the sea level creeping up through their town. They could, however, do something about the weird-looking mutant down the road. People took to all sorts of scapegoats when they couldn't face the world as it was.

Kurt nodded, but he didn’t laugh. He wasn’t ready to laugh right now. He inhaled deeply and gusted out a sigh. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ he admitted. ‘I have two days to find a place to live.’ _Looking like this_ , he wanted to say, but didn’t.

Todd sipped his beer. And then he said something Kurt really hadn’t expected. ‘Well that’s easy, yo. I’ll swing by after work tomorrow with the truck and we’ll get your stuff.’

‘Vhat?’ Kurt stared at him.

Todd stared right back. ‘Dawg, I got a fuckin’ spare room. Just move in there.’

‘ _Vhat_?’ Kurt said again, his mouth apparently on monosyllabic autopilot.

‘What do you mean, what? You need a place, I got a place, what’s the problem?’ Something uncertain and wary glinted in Todd’s dark eyes, something Kurt tried to catch. Missed.

‘It… it can’t be that _easy_ ,’ Kurt said, scrambling for words. ‘It’s not that easy. Have you even thought about it? What if you wake up tomorrow and you’re like “fuck, I don’t want mopey Germans and blue fur clogging my shower every day” or-’

Todd laughed, that throaty, dusty cackle that sent shivers down Kurt’s spine. ‘Dawg, I ain’t even had _one_ of these yet.’ He tapped his beer. ‘I ain’t makin’ offers I can’t stick to. Come on, things don’t have to be shit-hard all the time, that’s some Catholic bullshit, yo. You don’t even have to stay, y’know. You can just crash for a while if you don’t wanna get stuck with my scrawny ass forever.’

‘You aren’t scrawny.’

‘ _That’s_ what you decided to pick on outta all that? Really?’ Todd gave him an amused glance before swallowing more of his beer. ‘So how about it. Ain’t like there’s rent or contracts or whatever to deal with. Be better for me havin’ someone else around too. Technically if the cops show up while I’m out I ain’t got a leg to stand on. I’ve just been lucky since the chicks I was squattin’ with shipped out.’

‘It’s still…’ Kurt shook his head. ‘It is still not an offer you should be making without thinking about it for longer.’

‘So what?’ Todd stared at him challengingly. ‘It’s my offer to make, yo.’

They locked eyes for a moment, gold on black, and finally Todd was the one to look away.

‘Dawg… you are a piece of work, man.’ He shook his head as if to clear it and took a hasty sip of his beer. ‘Look. You’re a fuckin’… Catholic-ass prick, right? No, don’t fuckin’ interrupt.’ He held up a hand and Kurt’s mouth snapped gently shut. ‘You can do it your way, an’ get yourself all fuckin’ twisted up tryin’ to solve a problem you don’t need to deal with, because that’s what you do, cos God likes to piss on us or somethin’, or you can just say “ok” and make it easy.’ Black eyes looked at him seriously. ‘It’s okay for shit to be simple sometimes, dawg. Quit _fightin’_ all the time.’

‘I don’t want to be a burden,’ Kurt said softly. He felt ashamed to even admit it.

Todd laughed again, disbelieving. ‘Seriously, dawg? We’re all fuckin’ burdens sometimes, that’s just… that’s just human shit, man. We just kinda take turns at it. Do you remember that old guy we had for English class way back in like… I dunno, whatever grade we had English together?’

Kurt nodded, mystified. ‘Yeah, Mr… Oh wow, I’ve forgotten his name. I can _see_ him though.’

‘Okay, yeah, so that guy. You know he wanted us to read that longass story about, uhh… itinerant workers, right? Grapes of Wrath?’ He didn’t wait for Kurt to reply before continuing. ‘Well I didn’t read it – like, didn’t finish it, cos that shit was long as fuck – but I read _some_ of it, and there’s this bit, where the family in their jalopy bump into this old lady an’ her son and give ‘em a hand with somethin’. And then later, the old lady wants to do somethin’ to help them cos I dunno, someone’s dyin’ or givin’ birth or something, and the mom says they don’t wanna be burdens to anyone, and this old lady says somethin’ like “you can’t let help go unwanted”, like… People _wanna_ help each other, dawg. Some of us anyway. And it feels good, right? People like bein’ wanted, bein’ able to make a difference. An’ look, it ain’t all one way. I need someone else in the house to keep squattin’ rights on it while I’m at work, an’- an’ you need a place to live for a while. It ain’t… I ain’t sayin’ it just for the sake of it, dawg. And I ain’t gonna change my mind.’

Todd’s eyes felt like they were boring holes in him. Kurt took a slow sip of his beer, thinking hard. Maybe Todd was right. Maybe he was making this unnecessarily complicated out of some convoluted, weird Catholic guilt. Maybe this could be something easy. The stupid, romantic part of his brain gushed in ridiculous detail about being closer to Todd, but he sat on it, squashed it flat. There was a lot at stake here. He couldn’t just dive in like a teenager, let the whole thing blow up in his face as spectacularly as it could just because he had the option to.

This was a friendship he wanted to keep. Maybe even something else. He shook his head. Whatever it was, moving in and starting a romance at the same time was not sensible. It would have to be one or the other. He had two days.

But _fuck_ , he’d wasted so much time already helplessly wanting and craving and trying not to let it show, could he really condemn himself to even more of this? Living in a house with Todd, so close and yet so far, could be like a form of torture. Especially if Todd brought someone else back. Or started seeing someone. A lead weight settled in Kurt’s stomach. _He had two days_.

Suddenly Todd’s face was leaning into his direct line of vision with a wry grin. ‘The idea of livin’ with me that bad, dawg?’

Kurt let out a surprised laugh and shook his head, waving his hands in denial. ‘No, no, absolutely no. It is not. Not you. That.’ He deflated. ‘Not the problem.’ He took a sip of his beer to quell his churning gut. ‘I am a bit of a fuckup,’ he admitted.

‘So come be a fuckup with me,’ Todd said. ‘Not like you don’t half live at mine anyway these days.’

That was true. Kurt had been spending more and more time at Todd’s over the last month, even if he hadn’t slept there much. The memory of the last time, of that gentle hand carding through his hair, made his ribs ache. He wanted that again.

‘You ain’t gonna scare me off, Kurt,’ Todd said seriously, black eyes intent. He cracked a grin. ‘I lived with the Brotherhood, remember?’

Kurt smiled, surprising himself. ‘Yeah, but vill I live up to your standards? I can’t throw you through walls or casually destroy the foundations of the house in my sleep, after all.’

‘Just make coffee sometimes and we’ll call it even.’

Kurt’s laughter bubbled out of him like water, like liquid relief and joy and confusion and tiredness all in one, like a flowing stream.

At last, he looked at Todd and, daring himself, reached out to cover one of those broad, webbed hands with one of his own blue ones, broader still. ‘Thank you,’ he said seriously. ‘I. I think I am very lucky to know you.’

Todd smiled briefly, something clouded and warm and sad and beautiful. Then he looked away and drank from his beer. ‘Don’t mention it, yo.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dunh dunh DUUUUUNH. What could possibly go wrong?


	11. Happiness Will Be Our Revenge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kurt leaves behind a place that was never his, and he and Todd go home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo this chapter turned out so mahoosively long that I split it into two for easier reading. Looks like I lied about that chapter count again guys ;D  
> Double update day!

Kurt didn’t have a second drink. Todd did, but neither of them came anywhere even close to tipsy. Eventually, they wandered back out of the door and stood on the chilly sidewalk together while Todd had a smoke. Kurt felt a brief lurch of desire, of envy. He hadn’t ever been a big smoker, even with the circus, but right then he really craved nicotine. Todd somehow caught the greedy glow in Kurt’s eyes and wordlessly offered him the latter half of his cigarette. Kurt accepted, surprising even himself, and had a deep, slow couple of puffs before handing it back. It was nice, but it wasn’t what he needed.

As he watched Todd’s lips close back around the paper that had just been in his mouth, the filter wetted slightly by his tongue, he felt that surge of desire again. What he wanted, what he needed right then, was a fuck. If Todd noticed the slight gleam in Kurt’s eyes when the amphibious man blew out a smoke ring, he didn’t show it. And Kurt didn’t say anything. Todd was worth more than his selfish need, more than a stress-fuck.

At last, when the paper cylinder had all fallen to ash and smoke, Kurt said quietly,

‘Do you want a lift home?’

Todd didn’t reply, but this time it was him that took the initiative, stepping up close into Kurt’s space and wrapping lean arms around his waist. Kurt’s hands fluttered for a moment before settling comfortably around Todd’s shoulders – and wasn’t that something, the way Todd’s body melded to his like they were two beans in a pod, like any distance between them was too much? – and pulling him close. This time he didn’t try to hide from it, and buried his face in Todd’s hair properly, inhaling the level scent of lakewater and the strange, alien smell of oil and gasoline. He felt a cold nose rub tightly against the side of his neck and pretended he hadn’t.

When the smoke cleared, they were on Todd’s doorstep – Kurt hadn’t felt dangerous enough to ‘port them directly into the other man’s house right then – and the moon was a golden crescent in the sky, high above the peak of the roof. If it took them a moment to disentangle, to work out whose limbs went where, then there was no one to know but them and the moon.

When Todd spoke, his voice was rough, gentle. ‘I get off around four tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I’ll swing by in the truck after that.’

‘Thank you,’ Kurt said quietly in the still night air. Before he could second-guess himself, he pressed a quick, soft kiss to Todd’s forehead, and disappeared before he could catch the way the shorter man’s eyes widened in startled tenderness.

-

Kurt spent a lot of the next day berating himself about the kiss. He hadn’t meant to do that, to step so flagrantly across the boundary of friendship they’d laid out. Not without talking to Todd first. _But_ , a part of him protested, he’d _always_ been affectionate with his friends. He wanted to have friends he could exchange kisses and hugs with, friends who would hold his hand without flinching away. He wanted friends who wouldn’t think twice about sleeping in each other’s laps and running gentle fingers through each other’s hair.

The problem was that he didn’t want that with Todd, and he couldn’t pretend otherwise. He wanted to _date_ Todd, and that somehow, inexplicably, made everything feel more complicated. Whether it was or not was a matter of opinion, but Kurt’s opinion was that it was. Anything that involved him feeling like his heart was doing aerial manoeuvres in his chest was complicated.

He shouldn’t have kissed him. But it was too late for that now. He just hoped, as he packed his meagre belongings into an old suitcase and three cardboard boxes, that Todd wouldn’t change his mind because of it.

Four o’clock rolled around and Kurt’s things were already packed neatly away, except for the seedlings. He figured he could balance them on top, or maybe ‘port them to the house if Todd was happy to drive back with the rest of his stuff. It occurred to him, looking around his empty apartment, that it had been far too easy to pack down. It had felt like an inevitable consequence of living there, rather than a rushed and awkward attempt to leave.

It felt like he’d spent the last year just camping in here, like it was always going to be temporary. He supposed it had been, in a way. He hadn’t taken the apartment for any reason other than it was cheap and available quickly. It bore no meaning for him. In the year he’d lived here, he hadn’t made any effort to decorate it, to claim it as his space. He’d just… existed. Floated around inside its walls like a random particle. A stray word, unspoken in the mouth of an unhatched home.

He sat, and stared at the walls, and waited. What else was there to do?

After a few minutes, he got up again and checked the kitchen cupboards. They were empty. The fridge, too. He checked the drawers, the bathroom, even under the bed. Nothing. He didn’t bother to clean the place – they weren’t likely to return his deposit regardless – but other than the habitual grime of a space lived in by someone in possession of a body, there was no sign that he had ever lived there. Except for the cardboard boxes and suitcase by the door. It was depressing. As far as his stupid, tiny apartment was concerned, he might as well have never existed.

What if Todd didn’t come? The thought haunted him like he haunted the apartment, floating aimlessly around his mind. It wasn’t like he couldn’t get his stuff to Todd’s squat without the guy, but if he didn’t show, it would be for a reason, a reason that stated clearly that Kurt wasn’t welcome at his house either. Kurt’s skin prickled with the worry that maybe Todd would have second thoughts, that maybe he _should_ have spent the day trying to find somewhere else to live, rather than just packing and waiting.

Sometime shortly after four thirty, the buzzer rang. Relief flooded through Kurt like a blessing, pouring down through his limbs like a hot shower. He pressed the button and heard the door downstairs swing open. A strange, familiar sound rose up the stairwell, the spaced-out ‘thunk-thunk’ of Todd hopping upstairs. It occurred to Kurt that he’d know that sound anywhere. Even if Todd hadn’t come back into his life in the way he did, Kurt could have pinpointed that sound on a pitch-dark night and known exactly who it was. Maybe he wasn’t the only one who was known.

The door handle turned.

‘Yo, dawg, it’s me.’

Kurt couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled up out of him then, giddy relief and amusement at the silliness of it all – how could _anyone_ hear the sound of Todd coming up the stairs and not know who it was? Of course, not everyone knew the Toad, and those who did hadn’t all known him long enough to have that instinctual, gut-knowledge: ’that’s Todd’, when they heard his strange footfalls.

‘Thank you for coming.’ Kurt stepped around the bed and toward the door, toward where Todd stood, his face marked with engine grease, swathed in his brown leather jacket. The blue elf’s body swayed forward, but he stopped himself from walking right up into the other man’s personal space. It felt too close, too tender after last night’s slip. He wasn’t convinced he wouldn’t make another mistake like that if he let himself get closer.

Todd snorted. ‘Said I’d be here, din’t I?’

‘Yes, vell…’ Kurt rubbed the back of his neck. ‘That doesn’t mean I am not grateful.’

Todd’s black eyes caught at him, and Kurt could tell the shorter man was aiming for unimpressed, but the subtle softening of the sharp lines of his face put paid to that. Kurt’s heart beat a little faster.

‘Right…. This it?’ Todd gestured toward the three boxes and suitcase lined up against the wall.

Kurt nodded and stepped forward to pick up the suitcase – the heaviest item – and scooped a box up under his arm. ‘This is it. Except the plants.’

‘Okay.’ The amphibious man squatted down and caught up the other two boxes, lifting a foot to lever open the door handle.

Kurt was pathetically grateful that Todd didn’t make an issue of the fact that he apparently, in total, owned three cardboard boxes of kitchen utensils, bedsheets and books, and a suitcase half-full of clothes and padded out with the contents of the fridge.

‘How vas vork?’ he asked as he awkwardly planted his foot to hold the door open while Todd peeled himself away from it and started out into the hall.

‘Ah dawg, we got this fuckin _asshole_ in today,’ Todd started, and Kurt let himself drift on the sound of that familiar voice, the cadence and weird, oddball slang he knew so well. Everything was going to be alright. He was leaving this shithole apartment that didn’t even want him, and while moving in with Todd carried its own host of problems, he couldn’t see how much worse they could be than what he’d already been through. Sure, housing security in a squat was hard to come by, but as he’d found, it wasn’t a guarantee even if you were signed up on paper and paying the monthly fee.

Todd continued talking, complaining and laughing and cracking crude jokes, all the way to the truck.

‘He’s such an asshole I bet even his wife can’t tell which end the shit’s meant to come out.’ Webbed hands dropped the boxes into the bed of the truck and slid them forward against the cab so they wouldn’t crash forward under a harsh brake.

‘Did you do anything?’ Kurt dropped his burdens unceremoniously beside the other boxes. Over the last month or two he’d learned that Todd sometimes performed subtle little devilries on his less-desirable customers’ cars, like removing the wire to one speaker so the sound was consistently off, or putting something foul-smelling behind one of their A/C vents.

Todd shook his head. ‘Nah, Kat said I had to play nice cos this guy’s got, like, a fleet of cars he sends to us.’

Kurt was slightly shocked. ‘He _still_ does?’

‘Yeah. Fuckin’ sick, ain’t it?’ Todd spat contemptuously on the ground.

It seemed unthinkable that anyone could still own – and drive – more than one car. Gas wasn’t cheap these days, and most people had by now realised that they couldn’t continue on in the way they had been before the crash, not with the waves lapping at their doors in the height of the summer storms.

‘I’ll be right back,’ Kurt said, ‘porting back up to his apartment for the trays of fine, small seedlings. Before he stepped out of the door to lock it for the last time, however, he took a moment to look around at the empty, hollow house he was about to vacate.

How little he could remember of his time there. Meals eaten alone, perching on the side of the bed, crouched on the kitchen counter or languishing in the empty bathtub; hours of dissociating and staring blankly out of the window toward the raggedy yards and tumbledown fences of the nearby houses. The handful of times Rogue had visited, and filled the room with her quiet, warm presence. They had drunk tea together by that window. They had lamented her struggles to maintain some semblance of a relationship with Remy, sat together on that scratched vinyl floor. Those were good memories.

But there was one thing that stood out, one memory that Kurt held onto long enough to turn glowing eyes back onto the bed, now a bare mattress stripped of all hint of personality. For a moment, the memory of a night three months prior washed through, covering his eyes with a thin palimpsest of images, layered over one another in dizzying headiness. Webbed hands and dappled skin and a broad mouth stretched wide in a tearing cry; black eyes and a devious green tongue.

Kurt closed his eyes. It was too late now to have the conversation he knew he and Todd needed to have. But that didn’t mean it didn’t need to happen anyway. An arm like an iron bar pinning him to a wall. The challenge in black eyes staring up at him, daring him to move. The softening look in those same eyes as they looked across a room at him. A bright, easy grin that shone across a loud, dirty workshop bright enough to make his heart leap when it was draped in lead. They needed to talk.

When he returned downstairs, dropping the key unceremoniously into the apartment’s locked mailbox, he felt lighter, like someone had removed several pounds of weight from around his neck. He didn’t live in that cramped den of misery anymore. He didn’t have to eat in the fucking bathtub ever again if he didn’t want to. He was going to somewhere new, and he wasn’t alone.

There was no Todd when he got outside, startling him briefly, but the truck was still there in all its peeling glory. A hissing sound came from the road. Oh.

Kurt ‘ported across to the truck and gently laid the trays of seedlings on the passenger seat before turning to where Todd was crouched by the wall with its cruel words, a can in his hand, painting over the vicious slashes of silver with gold and red.

The elf said nothing, choosing instead to cross the street and lean on the opposite wall to watch the way Todd’s steady, sure movements obliterated the hatred that had been sprayed so liberally across the faded brick. Under his hands, a flower bloomed, venom red and limned with gold. Words blossomed beneath and around it, in a spiky, sharp font that felt like it cut at Kurt’s eyes.

 _HAPPINESS WILL BE OUR REVENGE_.

It felt like it took no time at all before Todd was finished, stepping back and eyeing his work critically, hip jutted out to one side like he was waiting for someone to push him. Kurt watched the way his shoulders moved under his jacket, the slight shrug before the other man started bouncing one of the cans up and down in his hand. He walked forward to stand beside the shorter man, running his eyes over the vibrant colour streaking the wall. It was beautiful, angry and soft and harsh and bright, and it was everything Kurt wished he could have said.

‘It’s beautiful,’ he said quietly.

Todd let out a ‘tsk’ of disagreement. ‘Nah dawg, it’s wonky as fuck.’

‘Not to me,’ Kurt replied. ‘It is… organic, yes?’

Todd snorted, but didn’t protest further. ‘You good to go?’

Kurt drew in a long, deep breath, his hands in his pockets, and nodded on a slow sigh. ‘Yeah. I think I am.’

Todd glanced up at him, dark eyes unreadable. A warm grin lit up his face. ‘Come on, Fuzz. Let’s go home.’

_Home._


	12. It Is Never Too Late To Tell The Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys get stoned and Kurt learns some ~communication skills~.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the rest of the monster chapter/double update. It wasn't going to be this long but it happened *jazz hands*
> 
> Like the bloody rest of this fic, huh? XD there's still a lil more to come!

The truck groaned into place outside the house and Todd killed the engine. The sudden quiet felt like a hand had clapped across Kurt’s ears, dulling all sound, like dunking his head underwater. They sat there for a long moment.

Finally, Todd let go of his grip on the steering wheel and began rummaging through his pockets.

‘Here,’ he said at last, hand finally closing on whatever it was he was searching for. He fished it out and held it out to Kurt. ‘Got you a key cut.’

‘Oh.’ Kurt stared at it for a heartbeat before remembering he was supposed to take it. ‘Danke.’

‘S’coo. C’mon, let’s get your shit inside.’

They gathered the boxes and Todd went to unlock the front door. Of course, Kurt could have ‘ported them both inside, but it felt somehow improper. If he was moving into a new house, it felt only right that he use the front door at least the first time. Even if he’d been to this house more times than he could accurately count by now.

Finally, the peeling wooden door swung open and Todd shuffled inside, Kurt following close behind. He closed the door gently with his tail and followed the shorter man up the stairs and along the little hallway to the room at the back of the house.

It was cleaner than he remembered it, the sporadic litter and thick layer of dust cleared away. The window was open, its thin, faded curtain lifting gently on the breeze.

‘Figured I’d air it out,’ Todd explained, dropping Kurt’s boxes on the bed.

Kurt grinned and prodded the other man gently with the tip of his tail. ‘I didn’t think you cared much about housekeeping.’

Todd shrugged, looking uncomfortable. ‘Yeah, yeah. I dunno, it was somethin’ my mom used to do when I was a kid an’ we had guests, back before all the bullshit. She’d always crack the fuckin’ window even in the middle of winter if someone was comin’ to see us. Coulda had a snowdrift up to here and she’d still’a done it.’

Kurt set down his suitcase and the third box and straightened to look around the room. One of the walls had a complicated little mandala sprayed across it, and he wondered how Todd had managed to make his lines that precise and neat using the inaccurate nozzle of a spray can.

‘Todd,’ he said, turning to face the other man.

‘If you say “thank you” again I’m gonna kick your ass,’ the amphibious mutant said flatly.

A grin spread across Kurt’s face like a cracked seal, and he laughed. ‘Okay. I vill not say it. But that does not mean I am not thinking it.’

‘Psh, you can think whatever you goddamn want. If I can’t hear it I don’t give a shit.’

Their words faded, and the quiet fluttered, suddenly tense and uncertain. Todd cleared his throat.

‘I’m, uh… You get your shit sorted out, I’m gonna make somethin’ to eat.’

‘Is it party food?’ Kurt asked solemnly.

It was Todd’s turn to laugh this time. ‘Yeah dawg, all those weird little cheese an’ grape things an hot dogs.’ He shook his head. ‘Just fried rice’n’shit. Kat gave us a rabbit some dude brought in so there’s that. Got us some beers too, figured that makes it a party, right?’ He shrugged. ‘Come down whenever you want, I’m just gonna…’ He jerked his thumb toward the door and turned away.

Kurt didn’t watch him go, choosing instead to open the box with his bedsheets in and start making the bed, quietly closing the window as the sun seeped below the horizon and plunged the world into dusk. He didn’t turn the light on while he unpacked, slotting books onto the empty shelf and hanging his clothes in the musty wardrobe. When he was done, the room looked much the way his old apartment had – like someone was camping in it. But it was better, because here he _was_ camping, in a way. He wasn’t paying rent, wasn’t officially here. A silly little thrill ran through him. He’d never squatted before.

He didn’t go down immediately, sitting on his bed and smoothing the cover out with one blue, furred hand as the room darkened, his rosary held idly in his lap. He wasn't praying, wasn't really even conscious of the way his fingers ran across the beads, lovingly caressing each one before moving onto the next. Old habits. It was nice that he could see the sunset through his window. In the summer it would be even nicer. Maybe he could find a mirror – or a piece of one – and hang it on the wall opposite the window to throw the light into the room. Maybe he could put up another set of shelves and put interesting things on them, like pretty rocks or dried flowers.

But all of those thoughts were a distraction, swirling eddies of mental gymnastics to avoid thinking about the elephant in his mind.

What was he going to do about Todd?

They needed – desperately needed – to talk. The way things had been for the last month or so had been alright, had been bearable, but this was a whole different kettle of fish. They hadn’t been living together then. Things had to be spoken about, brought out into the open, even if it hurt. They needed to know where they stood.

And Kurt knew that it would be up to him to start that conversation. Todd had made it clear right at the start how he felt about him, had made that dangerous leap of faith. And when Kurt had said he didn’t want to pursue a relationship, Todd had acquiesced, but for radically different reasons from his own. The amphibious man hadn’t wanted to start a relationship, not because he didn’t know how he felt, but because he didn’t want to risk bringing harm to Kurt’s door. Well now Kurt’s door was Todd’s door. The situation had changed radically.

But knowing all this didn’t make it any easier. Kurt tipped his head back against the wall with a sigh. How was he going to summon the courage – the confidence – to start this? To talk. What could he even say? He thunked his head gently against the wall a few times. _Think._

After a while, he gave up on where he was and took a shower, hoping that the steam and heat and water would help settle his whirling thoughts and gain him some kind of clarity. That hope swirled down the plughole with the water, and left him none the wiser.

When he went downstairs, he was no closer to answer; he had just run out of patience with himself, and the smell of cooking food drifting up the stairs had called like a siren, luring him out of his marinating and down into the brightly lit kitchen.

-

They ate together at the newly painted table because they could, and Kurt admired the further work Todd had done in the kitchen, twining green vinelike paintings around the cupboards and counters, dotted with bright blooms far more detailed than the halfhearted splodges Kurt had left on the table legs. It felt nice, warm and comforting, to be surrounded by Todd’s meandering artwork, like being woven into a nest. He liked it.

After dinner and two beers, they retired to the sofa and sprawled comfortably across it at each end, passing a joint between them. With every sip of smoke, Kurt grew a little bolder, inching his feet across the couch to eventually tangle with Todd’s legs in the middle. They each pretended they hadn’t noticed, and kept talking about other things, about the asshole customer at the garage, about Lance and Kitty’s weird high school drama, about Kat’s strange, quiet girlfriend who seemed to think Todd’s name was Monty. Kurt resolutely didn’t look at the hard shape of Todd’s arms, bared in a black t-shirt with the sleeves cut off.

There was no clock, but the hours ticked by, and they finished the beer, and they talked, and they ran out of words to say, and they smoked another joint and talked some more, and they tried – and failed – to play cards, and fell silent for half an hour, and still they didn’t go to bed. The air grew colder as the night drew on and Kurt would have hazarded a guess that it was somewhere after three. Still they didn’t sleep. They didn’t talk now either, didn’t really look at each other, at least not when the other could see.

The silence, punctuated by the soft groans and creaks of a house settling into slumber, stretched thin and taut. Kurt started to feel like every nerve in his skin was attached to a matching one in Todd, like there were strands of sticky web that thrummed secret messages between them, electric signals that shifted with every subtle motion, every breath. If there was a time to talk, it was now.

He wetted his lips, looked directly at Todd. Looked away. Tried again. When he looked back, black eyes flicked away. He glanced away too, heart pounding in his chest. He could feel it in his _face_. What was he going to say? Should he flirt? ‘We need to talk’? ‘I changed my mind’? ‘I think I might actually be a little bit in love with you’?

He breathed in slowly and- exhaled again, chickening out. His face heated up under his fur, humiliated by his own cowardice. He needed to say _something_. He needed to- to start this conversation.

But the gap between knowing that and doing it felt like a gulf, like a canyon without a bridge, and he didn’t know how to cross it. The minutes ached by as he came up with a hundred different openings and cast them aside. He pressed a palm flat against his pants pocket, feeling the subtle outline of the beads of his rosary, hoping for some of its strength, some flash of inspiration or courage. It didn't come.

Todd shifted, and Kurt looked at him, opened his mouth. Whatever came out, it didn’t matter. It had to be now.

But then Todd was moving, drawing his legs away and onto the floor. ‘I’m, uh… I’m gonna hit the hay, dawg.’

Kurt’s mouth shut with a soft click. His golden eyes glowed softly, trained on the lines of Todd’s face, thrown into sharp relief by the harsh light of the single, bare bulb above him.

He ducked his head in an approximation of a nod, and hated himself. ‘I… I think I vill do the same. It is very late.’

Todd nodded, eyes refusing to look at him. ‘Yeah.’ A webbed hand ran through long, brown hair, and Kurt thought that maybe it was a little shaky.

‘Todd.’ His tongue felt thick and heavy in his mouth

‘Yeah?’ The shorter man looked up, black eyes briefly wide, and Kurt saw something in them, something like hope, and that gave him the strength to speak.

‘Vhich bed should I sleep in?’ He drew in a quick, shuddering breath. ‘Mine? Or yours?’

Todd didn’t look away, but something in his gaze shifted. Red irises flashed brighter, and suddenly Kurt _saw_ it. The wrenching hunger that sometimes flickered in those dark eyes, fiery and hot and challenging. Kurt didn’t look away either.

For all that Todd’s face was sometimes shockingly expressive, so much of the time it was almost unreadable. In moments like these, full of tension and heat and _want_ , the only hint of Todd’s thoughts was in those open eyes. They closed. Kurt’s heart skipped a beat.

Todd’s chest expanded, contracted, taking in a slow, shaky breath. Then he opened his eyes again, and that heady, fierce look was still there, unhidden. ‘In mine.’

Kurt’s breath punched out of him in a sharp gust. Words were useless now. He took a hesitant step forward, and then another. Todd moved too. They stopped a hair’s breadth from each other, both hesitating. Thick blue fingers found webbed ones, and squeezed, tangling together.

Kurt watched Todd’s eyes, the aching uncertainty and hope and guarded tension in them, and for a moment he forgot how to breathe. Then a small smile lifted the corner of those wide lips.

‘C’mon,’ Todd said, lightly tugging on Kurt’s hand. ‘Let’s go upstairs.’

Kurt followed obediently, flicking the switch off as he passed. The stairs creaked as they went up, as though the wood was protesting being awoken so rudely in the middle of the night.

Todd didn’t turn the light on when they went into his room and Kurt was glad of it, because he could see just fine, and the sight of those dark eyes glowing, lit up with… desire, or lust, or something much bigger and scarier, was all he thought he ever wanted to see again.

They stood awkwardly in front of each other at the foot of the bed, and wasn’t that a wild difference from the first time, from the way they’d torn at each other’s clothes and panted and _taken_? Kurt wanted to touch Todd again so badly his skin burned with it, fur lifting on the back of his neck from the intensity.

Long fingers slid up to run through the fur on his cheek, threading back through into his hair and tangling there. The brush of cool skin on his ear made it twitch, flicker back and forth from the stimulus.

He let go of Todd’s other hand and ran his own fingers up a smooth, dappled arm, coming up to cup the back of the shorter man’s neck.

They breathed in the silence.

‘Todd,’ Kurt murmured.

‘Yeah?’

‘I-’ he made himself speak. Now was the time to be brave. ‘Todd, I really like you,’ he said in a rush, and it felt like what remained of the lead in his chest had grown wings. ‘I like you so much.’ It felt good to say it. He curled forward and pulled Todd against him, burying his face in the greener man’s neck, pressing their bodies together in a hard line, inhaling that familiar, flat scent of lakewater in the sun. ‘I can’t stop thinking about you,’ he gasped into smooth skin. ‘Can’t stop wanting you. Sometimes I want you so much I feel like I can’t breathe.’

Todd’s arm slid around his waist and pulled him harder against him, crushing their bodies together as the fingers of his other hand clutched tightly in Kurt’s dark hair. A wide mouth pressed against his neck, and Kurt felt as much as heard when he spoke, the words ruffling through his fur and lighting up every nerve.

‘Dawg, I feel like that _all_ the time.’

Kurt felt punch drunk, his head spinning with all of the feelings he hadn’t let himself touch. He _reeled_ with it. But he held on to Todd, and Todd held on to him, and together they stopped each other from flying apart. But it wasn’t enough; it was wonderful and bright and heady and amazing, but it still wasn’t enough. Kurt still wanted so much.

He pulled his head back abruptly, away from Todd’s cool neck, and with a startling, quick movement, crushed their lips together. Todd surged up into him, pressing harder still, all wide mouth and rushing fire down his throat, just like he’d thought. The hand in his hair tightened, pulling him down toward Todd, almost too hard, too fierce, but it thrilled through Kurt like an electric charge. _This_ was what he wanted.

He ran one hand in a broad, warm sweep down Todd’s back and slipped it up under the shorter man’s shirt, desperate to be touching more of his smooth, almost rubbery skin. Todd’s breath hitched in his throat and a shiver ran through his wiry frame. A green tongue slid across the seam of Kurt’s lips. He parted them eagerly, and ran light, blunt nails down the shorter mutant’s spine. The slide of Todd’s tongue along his own was like an electric shock, and Kurt whimpered quietly into the other man’s mouth. God, he wanted to suck on that tongue, see how much of it he could fit in his mouth, how much it would take to gag him, to make him beg for air- a flush ran under his fur. Jesus.

The hand not exploring the slim expanse of Todd’s back tugged lightly in brown hair, and now it was Todd’s turn to whimper. Fuck, Kurt had thought so much about that exact sound. That quiet, needy little noise Todd made when the taller man pushed him around a little. It hit somewhere deep in his lizard brain and made his whole body tense up, like he was preparing to pounce. A quiet, possessive growl slipped out, rumbling through his throat, and he quickly cut it off. That was a sound he tried to hold back on for a while, until partners had gotten used to all of the other strangenesses of his body.

But the way Todd shivered and clutched at him, the cut-off sound in that pale throat, made him think that maybe, maybe it was okay here. Maybe here, with Todd, he didn’t have to hold back to be seen as human. He slid both hands down Todd’s body to hook into his belt loops, tugging him hard against him, and _growled_.

Kurt hadn’t been prepared for the way Todd _melted_ , that strong, lithe body going slack against him for a heartbeat, hadn’t expected the shorter man to pull away and bury his face in Kurt’s neck with a quiet, desperate,

‘Oh _fuck_.’

He hadn’t been prepared for the pulsing, hot staccato of Todd’s breath hitching helplessly against his throat. He hadn’t expected any of that, but it lit him on fire. He pulled roughly at Todd’s belt loops, trying to turn them.

‘On the bed. Now.’ A part of him quailed, balking at the pushy, demanding tone in his own voice, but Todd obeyed immediately, shuffling up the bed and sprawling, eyes glowing bright crimson in the darkness. His chest rose and fell in sharp pants, and Kurt… Kurt felt drunk on power. Holy shit. Holy shit. ‘I like it vhen you do what I say,’ he murmured, sweeping his eyes across Todd’s body, taking in the way his black shirt had ridden up just enough to expose a band of pale, dappled stomach, the hard line of his dick outlined under his jeans, the slight flush across his face, deepening the markings under his cheekbones. He looked back up at Todd’s eyes, and his breath gusted out of him like a prayer.

‘You are so beautiful.’

The light dipped a little; Todd looked away with a snort. ‘Yeah right. C’mon, get down here.’

Kurt did as commanded, but slowly. He knelt on the edge on the bed, running strange, blue hands from Todd’s bare feet up the lines of his shins, over his knees, up strong thighs. He evaded the hot length of the shorter man’s erection and pushed his hands up further, rumpling Todd’s shirt and sliding it up his body to expose more of that dappled skin.

‘You _are_ ,’ he said quietly, eyes trained on the flesh he was revealing. ‘ _I_ think you are.’ Maybe Todd wasn’t _handsome_ , per se, but he was plenty beautiful.

‘Would you just kiss me already?’

Kurt laughed, flicking his gaze up to Todd’s disgruntled face. ‘No, I don’t think I vill. You’ll have to ask nicer zan zat.’

Todd rolled his eyes and thunked his head back against the headboard.

‘Lift your arms,’ Kurt commanded, and Todd obeyed, despite the unimpressed expression on his face.

Kurt slid Todd’s shirt off and threw it aside, shifted to straddle Todd’s hips, and oh, that made that dour expression slip straight off like oil. He rocked his hips gently down and felt the electrifying arch of Todd’s spine in response. _Fuck_. He dove down and started kissing at the join of Todd’s neck and shoulder, peppering sharp bites between his markings and lapping across them with his tongue. No matter what else happened tonight, he wanted to make sure that when Todd looked in a mirror, he would see the marks Kurt had left, feel the imprint of sharp teeth in his skin. Remember.

Webbed hands scrabbled at his shoulders, one sliding up to grip in his hair. Every bite was deeper, harder, than the last as Kurt tested the limits of Todd’s pain tolerance. The shorter man, however, went from quiet gasps to bitten-back whimpers to ragged moaning the harder they got, until _Kurt_ didn’t want to bite any harder. He knew what his teeth could do, after all, and he had no desire to actually hurt Todd.

‘Fuck, Kurt, _fuck_ , your teeth- Jesus fuckin’ Christ, fuck, you feel so good,’ Todd babbled, his voice lurching and wavering as Kurt slid further down to worry at his collarbone and chest, leaving a trail of dark purple and red bruises.

Every sound Todd made was logged in Kurt’s mind, tucked away to remember, to think about when… But he might not _have_ to think like that. This, whatever it was, might happen again. A lot. The thought overwhelmed him, the idea that maybe this was the beginning of something – not just a blip – that maybe there would be a lot more times like this, where he could have Todd spread out and mewling beneath him, where he could greedily suck and bite marks into smooth skin just to show that he had been there, that they had done this together.

He pulled back abruptly and stared down at Todd, whose face was contorted with the potent mix of pain and pleasure, wide mouth open in punching gasps.

‘Todd-’ he started.

‘Nuh-uh,’ the shorter man interrupted. ‘No way. We ain’t stoppin’ to do feelings talk.’

Uncertainty washed through Kurt – what if, what if, what if? ‘But-’

‘Dawg, we can talk in the _morning_.,’ Todd said roughly. ‘I like you, you like me, we’ve got a bunch of shit to work out, okay. _Tomorrow._ If you make us stop right now I am gonna fuckin’ bite you.’ A webbed hand passed firmly over the elf’s groin as punctuation.

‘Bite me anyway,’ Kurt said breathlessly, tugging at Todd’s belt, fumbling with suddenly-clumsy fingers to undo it. Todd was right: they could talk later. Right now, what mattered was getting these _fucking_ pants off.

But Todd took him at his word, and suddenly there was a strong, hard body surging up and flipping them, pressing Kurt hard into the mattress, and there were lips straddling his collarbone, yellow teeth digging into soft flesh, a hot tongue swiping across his skin and Kurt’s hands stuttered as he moaned loud enough to startle himself.

Todd pulled up, red eyes glowing dangerously in the dark as a predatory grin stole across his face. ‘My turn.’

He dove back down, wrapping long fingers tightly around blue wrists and pinning them to the pillows like an anvil, wide lips finding Kurt’s throat as a long tongue slid across furred flesh. Teeth nipped sharply at the sensitive skin under a long, pointed ear, that green tongue soothing away the sting before travelling further up, laving over the thin shell with a wet, sliding sound that sent shivers down Kurt’s spine.

Hips pressed his own into the bed, grinding down mercilessly into his bucking movements and rocking with him. As Todd scattered harsh kisses and bites down Kurt’s neck, he was forced to relinquish his grip on the blue man’s wrists, bringing both hands down to tear at the hem of Kurt’s shirt.

‘This- off, now,’ he said, and perhaps that shouldn’t have hit as hard as it did, the way that articulate mouth had seemingly lost the power of complete speech, but it did, and Kurt had no intention of resisting. He struggled up enough for Todd to yank off his shirt and throw it aside, but before he could wrap his arms around the other man’s slim shoulders and pull them both back down, those strong, webbed hands were gripping his wrists again and forcing him back into the pillows.

Red, glowing irises met gold, and Todd leaned in close, so close Kurt could feel his breath on his damp, kiss-swollen lips.

‘Kurt,’ Todd said. ‘Kurt. Listen dawg, I don’t wanna stop for fuckin’ _nothin’_ , so listen to me, okay?’

Kurt nodded fervently, eyes wide and staring.

‘I like you with everythin’ I fuckin’ got, every fuckin’… atom, okay? If you’re worried about scarin’ me off, you won’t. If you think you’re gonna freak me out, you won’t. I don’t scare easy, and _you_ sure as shit don’t frighten me. If you – shut up, I’m talkin’, dawg – if you just wanna fuck and change your mind tomorrow, I can fuckin’ _deal_ with it, okay?’ He punctuated his words with a solid burst of pressure to Kurt’s wrists. ‘Don’t go getting’ all up in your head about shit, okay? Please.’ Those glowing eyes bored into Kurt, intense and earnest, and Kurt finally snapped enough out of his funk to brutally twist his shoulders, wrenching his hips and rolling them so he was kneeling above the other man. Todd’s hands didn’t let go of his wrists, and long legs wrapped around his waist, dragging him in close as Kurt dipped his head to murmur directly into Todd’s ear.

‘I don’t just want to fuck.’ He ran his pink tongue over the shell of Todd’s ear, rolling his hips down into the warmth of the shorter man’s body. ‘I want _everything_ , everything you vill give me.’ Blue lips smeared wet, messy kisses across a dappled cheek before finding Todd’s mouth again and kissing him deeply. ‘I want _you._ ’ Then he grinned quickly, a flash of teeth in the dark. ‘That said, I _do_ want to fuck you.’

‘Well that makes two of us,’ Todd said, wide mouth stretching in a lascivious grin. Kurt kissed him again, lingering and slow, suckling on the amphibious man’s green tongue and drawing it into his mouth, relishing its strange flexibility. He hollowed his cheeks and sucked, and Todd made a sound somewhere between a moan and a cry, a sound that shot straight to Kurt’s dick and made him whimper in response, bucking his hips harder against the other mutant. He shifted one leg and found the right angle to tuck the hard length of his dick along the heated line of Todd’s and rutted slowly into him, chasing the contact, the hot friction.

When they finally parted for breath, Kurt ducked his head low and pressed another wet kiss to that still-damp ear. ‘Todd,’ he gasped. ‘Todd, I vant you to fuck me. I want to feel you inside me so badly. Please,’ his mouth stuttered around the words, but he plunged on, heedless of his pride. He’d given Todd enough uncertainty. It was time to be clear. ‘Please say yes, I want to feel you so bad.’

Todd’s hips stuttered and faltered for a moment before those strong hands released their grip on Kurt’s wrists and flew instead to the blue man’s hips, clutching them hard enough to bruise. Red and black eyes stared up at him, thrown wide.

‘You sure? Cos if you ain’t-’

‘I’m sure,’ Kurt said quickly. ‘I am very, very sure. I have- I have thought about it a lot.’ He laughed weakly. ‘I cannot _stop_ thinking about it.’

‘Oh yeah?’ Todd’s voice cracked in the middle, ruining the thin attempt at bravado, and Kurt knew the other man was as gone as he was.

It was that which gave him the courage to duck down close again, ease his lips over Todd’s soft mouth, and murmur,

‘You don’t want to know how many times I’ve touched myself thinking about you inside me.’

And oh, he could _feel_ how hard that hit from the sudden throb of Todd’s cock where it was pressed, hot and close, against his own.

‘Oh yes I fuckin’ do,’ Todd said after a moment of gaping, fingers flying to Kurt’s waistband – for once he _had_ worn jeans – and popping the button, tugging down the zipper. ‘Cos I bet you don’t got nothin’ on me, yo.’

Kurt threw his head back and laughed giddily, baring his throat. ‘Maybe not,’ he teased. ‘But I bet I can catch up.’

Todd snorted. ‘You won’t fuckin’ _have_ to, dawg. Cos I don’t know about you, but I’m plannin’ on suckin’ your dick at _least_ once a day from here on out.’

Arousal flooded through Kurt’s body at Todd’s words, and his dick twitched helplessly against his thigh, still trapped inside his now-unbuttoned jeans. The shorter man pulled himself up to wrap wiry arms around Kurt’s torso and press wet, sloppy kisses to his collarbone, trailing across his chest to take his right nipple into that broad mouth.

‘I’m villing to negotiate,’ Kurt gasped, hands tangling in Todd’s long hair, fisting tightly in it as teeth grazed across the sensitive nub of flesh. ‘But first, you are going to fuck me.’

Todd’s mouth broke away from Kurt’s chest for a few seconds as the other man nodded fervently, and then that long tongue was curling out and across the thicker fur on his sternum, sliding wetly across both of his nipples and making his breath catch in his throat before it slipped down his torso, down past his navel and lower still. Unlike the breadth of a hand, Todd’s tongue had no issues sliding down into Kurt’s jeans, under the loose waistband of his boxers, and nudging its way along the swollen length of his cock, twining tightly around it, squeezing and pulsing, obliterating every thought in Kurt’s head.

Distantly, he was aware of the loud, broken moan that clawed up out of his mouth, the way his hands squeezed and loosened in Todd’s hair, but all of his attention was focused on the wet, swirling heat enveloping the entire length of his dick, on the tight tunnel of Todd’s writhing tongue, and he couldn’t bring himself to care. Cool fingers slipped down under the back of his jeans to knead at his buttocks, and a hand slipped up to scratch burning trails through the fur on his chest. All he could hear was his own gasping. It could have been seconds or hours of that hot, bright pleasure, but then his thighs tensed, trembling, and all of a sudden his orgasm was rushing toward him like a freight train.

‘Please, Todd, bitte, _fuck_ ,’ he gabbled, clutching at the other man’s hair like a lifeline. ‘Fuck, close, so- so close, Todd-’

And then, cruelly, that wicked, sliding tongue was withdrawn, just as quickly as it had arrived, and Kurt was left gasping and panting, his eyes wide and shocked, almost _betrayed_ by the sudden lack of sensation.

Todd paused to pinch some lint off his tongue, and then grinned darkly at the whimpering German.

‘Take ‘em off.’

It was only as Kurt scrambled to get up and yank his pants and loose boxers off that he realised how thoroughly the tables had turned. He didn’t care.

Todd quickly divested himself of his own pants and underwear, bucking up to tug them past his hips and kicking them awkwardly off the side of the bed, inside out. His eyes ran up and down the length of Kurt’s body greedily, a webbed hand fluttering down to lightly stroke his own dick. He dragged yellow teeth across his kiss-bruised lower lip, burning eyes glued to Kurt’s face.

‘You gonna come back down here?’

Kurt didn’t hesitate, clambering back up the bed and pausing to dot scattered soft kisses and sharp nips up the length of Todd’s hard thighs, chasing himself up to the crease of his legs and running the tip of his tongue up the seam of Todd’s balls. A thick-fingered hand batted webbed fingers away from the greener man’s dick and settled around it firmly, running tightly up and down a few times.

‘Two can play at zat game, Todd.’ Then he slid his lips down over the swollen head of Todd’s cock, diving down and swallowing him all the way to the root like he had the first time they’d done this.

The sound Todd made was just as shockingly glorious as last time, too. Kurt bobbed his head, setting a hard, fast pace full of swirling tongue and hollowed cheeks, his whole body thrumming with the taste of Todd’s dick in his mouth again. _Finally, finally_ it seemed to be saying. He closed his eyes and let his ears fill with the greedy, wet sounds of his mouth on Todd’s cock, and the gasping, scattered words and soft noises falling from the Toad’s lips.

‘Fuuuck, Fuzz, you’re so fucking good at that, holy shit. Ahh, you’re- God, you’re so fuckin’- so fuckin’ beautiful, dawg. I want you so fuckin’ bad,’ Todd moaned helplessly, a hand cast up to cover his eyes. ‘Fuck, you have any idea how fuckin’ good you feel? _Fuck_ , Kurt-’

Kurt slid one hand between the other man’s legs to squeeze and lightly pull on Todd’s sack, keeping him from coming too quickly. He wanted this to _last_.

As he kept up the brutal pace, tongue swirling around the head of Todd’s dick before his lips slid back down to encase him fully in tight, wet heat, the other man’s voice grew hoarser and louder, cracking on every long moan and sharp gasp. His words dissolved into a meaningless babble of clustered syllables and half-spoken cries of Kurt’s name. Every now and then Kurt would feel that telltale tension build up and increase the gentle pressure of his hand, staving off the inevitable for a little longer.

And every time, Todd’s voice got a little bit louder, a little more ragged, and Kurt thought that he could happily do this forever if it meant he got to keep hearing _that_.

At last, however, Todd’s hands fisted tightly in his hair and _pulled_ , forcing his mouth up off the shorter man’s dick with the wet slapping sound of releasing suction. He willingly followed the insistent tugging and came up to kiss Todd’s wide mouth, their lips crashing together hard enough to bruise, hard enough for teeth to clack awkwardly, but he couldn’t make himself mind as Todd’s shuddering whimpers fled into his mouth like prayers, like something holy. This was the only way Kurt wanted to worship from now on.

They kissed for a long moment, hard and fierce and clumsy, sharp teeth catching on a long tongue and soft lips, until Todd finally pushed Kurt off and to the side, chest heaving.

Kurt was momentarily thrown, but had no time to speak before Todd was following him, rolling up onto his knees and bodily hauling Kurt onto all fours.

‘You think you’re real fuckin’ clever, don’t you?’ the sharp crack of Todd’s voice sent a violent shiver through Kurt. Maybe he liked threatening too, sometimes. There was a heartbeat of stillness before cool, slippery fingers were nudging between his cheeks and running teasing circles around his entrance. ‘Well see, the problem with what you’ve gone and done, Kurt.’ One finger pressed and pulsed gently inside Kurt, making him moan and jerk back, trying to force it in deeper. Todd moved with him, refusing to follow the elf’s hint, and just kept lightly pulsing his finger where it was, barely breaching. ‘Is you’ve gotten me so fuckin’ riled up that if I fuck you now, I’m gonna last all of two seconds. And I don’t want that. I don’t wanna just fuck you and go off like a fuckin’ firework. I want to do this _right_.’ That teasing finger slid in further, until Kurt could feel the tightness of webbing against his skin. A cool, snaking sensation startled him before the familiar sensation of Todd’s tongue found his cock again, dragging lightly up it in a single stroke and lapping at the head.

‘Fuck, _Todd_ ,’ he groaned quietly, clenching his hands in the bedsheets and squeezing his eyes tightly shut. The tongue withdrew.

‘So here’s what we’re gonna do,’ Todd said, that harsh voice sounding almost conversational, almost casual, like he didn’t have a raging hard on pressed against Kurt’s thigh. The first finger withdrew briefly to be joined by a second, sliding in and out in curling passes that made Kurt’s breath come ragged in his chest. ‘You’re gonna tell me when you’re close again, and I’m gonna just,’ the fingers withdrew. ‘Stop. And then, when you’re good an’ steady again, I’m gonna… keep going,’ the fingers returned, the tongue slid back around to briefly twine around Kurt’s weeping cock again.

The blue man hiccupped out another broken whimper, his fur standing on end as he shivered with desire. Todd withdrew his tongue once more.

‘Sound good?’

Kurt nodded sharply, not trusting himself to speak.

‘Well okay then.’

And then Todd’s tongue was curling around the length of his dick again, slow and tight and hot, and Todd’s fingers moved faster, deeper, and Kurt threw his head back in a tearing moan as they brushed almost – so _close_ – against his prostate.

Todd didn’t speak again, his tongue otherwise occupied, but he still made sounds, quiet growls and shuddering breaths, little hums of satisfaction or curiosity whenever Kurt responded particularly enthusiastically. He added a third finger, and Kurt rocked back, seeking desperately for more sensation. And now the angle was right, the length of three fingers uninterrupted by webbing enough for Todd to finally reach and grind the pads of his fingers up into Kurt’s sweet spot. The blue elf threw his head back in a sharp, aching cry and nearly lost it right there as the sweep of Todd’s tongue dragged across the very tip of his dick.

‘Stop, stop, bitte, I’m going to-’

The sudden coldness of air on wet flesh was shocking, and he gasped at even that, every nerve firing in his overstimulated, bedraggled state.

Todd’s fingers brushed his prostate experimentally again and Kurt let out a long, shaking moan.

‘Please Todd, please, bitte, fuck me, _fuck_ Todd I want you so bad-’

‘I don’t want you to _want_ me,’ Todd cut him off. The iron note in his voice resonated through Kurt like a struck bell. ‘I want you to _need_ it.’ He ground his fingers up against the Nightcrawler’s sweet spot again. ‘I want you to _need_ me to fuck you like you need to breathe.’ His free hand found Kurt’s cock and pumped it once, twice. ‘An’ trust me, dawg, I can do this all night if that’s what it takes.’

As it turned out, it didn’t take all night, not anything close, for Todd to reduce Kurt to a whimpering, pleading mess, his face buried in the pillows to stifle the rampant moans and ratcheting cries that poured from his mouth with every exhalation. Every time he started to tense, to get close, the other man would stop and cruelly withdraw his hands – or his tongue – and wait until the elf’s gasping breaths evened out and he’d stopped whimpering before starting again. His patience was implacable, obscene. Even Kurt’s questing tail wrapping tightly around his dick didn’t shake it.

Finally, legs trembling and stomach quivering with the tension, Kurt couldn’t stand it any longer.

‘ _Please_ , Todd,’ he begged, so far past the border of pride that he barely even noticed the desperate whine in his own voice. ‘Please, _fuck me_.’ His voice cracked over the words, tightly-wound desire seeping out of every grating note.

Then there was a smooth, cool weight along his spine, and a wide mouth pressed to his ear. ‘Your wish is my command, yo.’

The fingers inside him withdrew, and Kurt belatedly realised he should release his tail’s grip on Todd’s cock, slipping it away and lifting it in a curling figure of eight above his back, out of the way. Todd’s hand gripped his hip, fingertips lightly rubbing circles in his fur, while the other guided the head of his dick to line up with Kurt’s entrance.

And then – oh, _fuck_ – then he was pushing in and Kurt couldn’t bite back the deep, growling moan that tore up out of him.

‘ _Fuck_ ,’ Todd hissed as he sheathed himself fully inside the elf, leaning forward to press shaky, messy kisses between the blue man’s shoulder blades. ‘Fuck, Kurt… Fuck, you feel so good, _shit_.’

Kurt rocked backward in reply, pressing himself firmly back into the other man’s hips. He glanced over his shoulder, bared a fang. ‘Fuck. Me.’

A grin spread across Todd’s face and the red glow of his eyes deepened even further. Then he pulled out, almost to the very tip, before pressing back in, starting up a deep, slow rocking motion that lit up every nerve in Kurt’s body. That green tongue returned once more, sliding around part Kurt’s hip and curling in tight loops around his dick, matching the slow motions of Todd’s cock inside him. He clenched his fists in the sheets and when Todd hit his prostate he cried out and didn’t try to hide it in the pillow.

That seemed to light a fire under the amphibious mutant’s ass, and he gripped Kurt harder, quickening the pace and adjusting his angle to press against Kurt’s sweet spot with every deep thrust.

‘Kurt, fuck, Kurt, you feel so good, so fuckin’ perfect, holy shit. I- _ah_ – fuck, you’re so fuckin’ _hot_ , dawg, so gorgeous, shit, I wanna make you feel so good, wanna make you _scream_.’

The words spilling from Todd’s lips were barely heard over Kurt’s own gasping moans and half-swallowed cries of the other man’s name, but they shot straight to his dick like electricity, like fire in his veins.

Suddenly Todd paused, panting. ‘Gimme- gimme a sec, dawg, I’m… Fuck, I’m so fuckin’ close.’

Kurt tried to rock back, glancing over his shoulder mischievously, but Todd smartly slapped his thigh.

‘This ain’t over yet, dawg.’ The greener mutant seemed to hesitate for a moment. ‘You know what, I really wanna look at you. Wanna get on top for a bit?’

Kurt nodded rapidly, shuffling forward. The sensation of Todd’s dick sliding out of him wasn’t pleasant, but it didn’t matter, because the shorter man was lying down beside him, leaning up against the headboard, and Kurt was scrambling over to straddle him and then-

He sank down onto Todd, breath catching in his chest as he watched the way the other man’s mouth fell open, eyes wide and pupils so blown that the bright glow of his irises was barely visible. Trembling hands found his hips, lifting very slightly, and Kurt took the hint. Blue hands gripped the headboard and the elf started riding Todd, tucking forward to just the right angle for the shorter man’s dick to pound into the sensitive bundle of nerves inside him, making him see stars. He didn’t take his eyes away from Todd’s, even though he wanted desperately to cover his own, to hide the faces he must be pulling, hide just how deeply in this he was.

But Todd didn’t look away either, and Kurt hadn’t prepared for this, hadn’t expected looking into the other man’s eyes to feel so raw and tender and almost fucking _painful_. He felt laid bare, vulnerable, like an exposed nerve, like he was baring his fucking soul.

But if he was, Todd was too, and those dark eyes were just as raw and full as he thought his own must be. Todd wasn’t hiding from him. So he wouldn’t hide either. He leaned down between his arms and Todd rose up to meet him, kissing him like he was water in the desert, like he was something precious, something _loved_.

A webbed hand found its way to Kurt’s neglected cock and, after a few stuttering movements, started pumping it in time with his thrusts down onto Todd’s dick. The combined sensations brought him to a mewling, weak-legged mess in an embarrassingly short time, and he lost his rhythm. Todd dropped away from the kiss and planted his feet on the mattress, pistoning his hips and fucking up into Kurt while the elf fell apart above him.

Soon, though, Todd’s movements started to slur and stutter, becoming staccato and desperate.

‘I can’t- fuck, Kurt, I can’t hold on anymore, dawg, I’m gonna come, fuck I wanna come inside you so bad.’

‘Me too, me too,’ Kurt gasped, rocking down to meet every one of Todd’s thrusts as that webbed hand slid tightly around his dick with a perfect grip. ‘I vant to feel you come so hard- ah, _Todd,_ fuck. Come for me. Come for me, Todd.’

‘Look at me,’ Todd said. ‘I wanna see you come.’

Kurt struggled to raise his eyes and focus on Todd’s eager, flushed face. Those black eyes felt like they were gazing right into his heart, seeing every little bit of him that he tried to hide. A thumb brushed across his cheek.

‘Come for me, Kurt, I wanna feel you come so bad, wanna _see_ you-’

And that was it. Kurt fought to keep his eyes open, staring helplessly at Todd as his mouth dropped open and a cry shredded raggedly out from his throat. His orgasm slammed through him like a hammer, sending hot, sweet pleasure rocketing through every nerve, every vein, lighting him up so bright he thought he might _die_. He came in spurts and bursts over Todd’s hand, dribbling down between the other mutant’s fingers and painting his dappled stomach with streaks of white.

The clenching, fluttering pressure must have pushed Todd over the edge too, because a moment later-

‘Oh, _fuck_. Fuck. Fuck, _Kurt_!’ Todd’s head shot back, baring the length of his bruised throat, body arching up and burying himself fully inside the other man. Kurt felt his hard cock pulse inside him, filling him with wet warmth. _'Fuck.'_

The elf leaned down and eased his lips over the other man’s neck as his lithe body shook with aftershocks, running his tongue lightly up and down over the marks he’d left earlier.

Todd slumped back against the mattress and Kurt pulled back to admire the tangled mess of his hair, the dark flush across his cheeks, the pattern of dark bruises that trailed down his neck and chest. He looked, categorically, very well fucked.

A gentle hand ran up Kurt’s stomach, trailing lightly through the fur and ruffling it up against the grain before smoothing it back down again. He purred contentedly, a pleasant, warm shiver running through him as the tension ebbed and faded into soft afterglow.

He leaned down , bracing his elbows on either side of Todd’s head, and kissed the other man gently, easing his full lips over wider ones like there was all the time in the world. Maybe there was.

After a while, the position grew uncomfortable, and Todd grabbed up a t-shirt from beside the bed to clean them both up. It was neither of the ones they’d been wearing earlier, a fact for which Kurt was quite grateful – he didn’t have many clothes and was fully intending to wear that one for at least another day.

He excused himself briefly to ‘port to the bathroom and clean up a bit more thoroughly. When he came back, Todd was lying half-under the covers, having evidently struggled into them and decided ‘that’ll do’ halfway in. He had a joint clutched between his fingers, which he offered to Kurt as soon as the elf returned.

Kurt slid under the covers beside Todd and accepted, taking a long drag before handing it back. He propped himself up on one elbow and trailed light fingers in swirling patterns over Todd’s dappled skin, tracing the edges of his patches, the seam between light and dark skin. He hadn’t lied that first day: he did like them. Right then he couldn’t think of many things he didn’t like about Todd, though he was sure he could put a list together when not fucked-out and stoned, if he really wanted to.

‘May I still sleep in here tonight?’ he asked quietly, unsure and off-kilter now that the heady haze of lust had cleared and all that remained was the smell of sweat and sex staining the air.

Todd gave him an incredulous look. ‘Dawg, I said “in mine”, right?’

Kurt laughed, relief blooming in his chest. ‘Ok, smartass, I just wanted to make sure.’

Todd took another drag on the joint and passed it back to Kurt. ‘You are cordially invited,’ he said with a faux-stern tone, ‘to sleep in my fuckin’ bed whenever you goddamn please. Whether I’m in it or not, yo.’

‘Mm,’ Kurt sipped at the smoke and held it for a moment before exhaling. ‘I think I’ll take the scenario where you’re in it too, please.’

Todd laughed and stole the joint back. ‘Your wish is my command, dude.’

‘Mm,’ Kurt agreed, snuggling down and into Todd’s side, wriggling close enough to rest his head on the other man’s chest. ‘That’s vhat you said earlier. You vere right – you might have made quite a few vishes come true this evening.’ He yawned. ‘So I can kind of believe it.’

‘Yeah?’

Kurt jabbed him in the side. ‘You just vant me to tell you I wanted your dick really badly.’

‘Didn’t you?’

Kurt laughed. God, the guy was such an _ass_ sometimes. ‘Vell ja, dude, I thought that was pretty obvious.’ He picked up Todd’s free hand and danced it across his own chest. ‘I, Kurt Wagner, begged you, Todd Tolensky, to fuck me, and I meant it. And still mean it.’ His gaze slid up to what he could see of the other man’s face from this angle. ‘I am – how is it? – I am _thirsty_ for you.’

Todd spluttered out a laugh and coughed on the smoke. When his breathing settled, black eyes glanced fondly down at Kurt and the webbed hand he was puppeteering took on a life of its own and squeezed him, arm tightening around his shoulders. ‘I’m pretty fuckin’ thirsty for you too, dawg. If you hadn’t said somethin’ tonight I mighta fuckin’ died from holdin’ it in.’

‘That vould make a terrible epitaph,’ Kurt murmured, accepting the joint back.

‘Yeah,’ Todd laughed, waving a hand across the air. ‘Here lies Todd, he died of repressed thirst.’

‘Hmm,’ Kurt hummed again, shifting to stub out the joint on the bedside table before resettling into Todd’s arms again. A cool hand slid into his hair, carding through it like it had that night Kurt fell asleep on the couch. ‘I think I would not like zat. No more repressing your thirst for me, it’s banned. Illegal. Outlawed.’

‘Dawg, I _am_ an outlaw. I’m literally in hiding.’

Kurt pouted. ‘Ja, but that’s a shit reason to not fuck me.’

The shaky vibration of Todd’s laughter through his fur brought a grin to the elf’s face. He pushed his hair out of his eyes and looked up at the other man, smiling so hard his cheeks hurt. God, he liked him so much.

‘I think any reason is a shit reason to not fuck you.’ The fingers in his hair tightened momentarily, tugging very lightly, and Kurt’s eyes slid closed. He sank down further, snuggling in close to Todd’s side.

‘Me too. Ve are both fucking idiots.’ He yawned again, jaw cracking with it. ‘And like you said, ve can talk in the morning. I am very sleepy.’

‘I wonder why.’

‘Psh.’ Kurt waved a hand at his bedmate and rolled over. ‘Shh, shut up, go to sleep. Cuddle me.’

Todd’s quiet laughter enveloped him as the other man settled himself down more comfortably, pulling Kurt close against him and pressing his face into the blue man’s dark hair.

‘Have I told you how much I like how fuckin’ bossy you are?’

‘Mm, nein, but I guessed from the vay you go all floppy vhen I tell you to do things to me in bed.’

There was a light slap to his rump.

‘I do _not_ go _floppy_.’

‘Mm, your dick doesn’t,’ Kurt agreed. ‘But the rest of you? You _melt_ , dude.’

‘Dawg, you’re throwin’ stones in a glass house again. You were a fuckin’ _puddle_ when I was done playin’ with you.’

‘Yes,’ Kurt agreed evenly. ‘And _I_ am not afraid to admit it. _And_ ,’ he pressed his hips back into Todd’s body, wriggling them a little. ‘I fully expect you to do that again sometime.’

‘Gladly, yo.’ Todd’s laughter vibrated through Kurt’s back and the blue man grinned as strong arms pulled him in even closer. ‘Anytime.’

‘You may regret those words,’ Kurt said, but his voice was growing thick and soft with sleep, and he let his eyes slide shut. A quiet, rolling purr emanated out from his chest, and Todd held him a little tighter.

‘No I won’t.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there wasn't originally going to be a sex scene in this chapter, but uhh, the boys told me they'd EARNED those orgasms so I guess I couldn't argue?  
> (yeah we're going back to the bad old days of ffnet author notes where there's character interaction, wahey!)
> 
> See you in the next chapter! Thank you all for reading this far <3 your support, comments and kudos have kept this fic going. Thank you.


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